ABSTRACTSfortheSCHEDULEDPRESENTATIONS
Ali, Tyrone (University of the West Indies- St. Augustine) Tyrone.Ali@sta.uwi.edu
When Fiction Becomes Real Life: Examining Language and Affect among the
Transgender
The multiplicity of negative linguistic and paralinguistic constructions used in the
everyday discourse of describing, expressing and experiencing non-heteronormative
sexualities generates an emotive language use that has come to characterize language and
affect of members of the LGBTQ community in very real and disruptive ways. The
transgender sex and gender identity has not escaped such a diatribe unscathed. In
actuality, such individuals may very well be seen as the recipients of an even more acute
application of pejorative language use that has resonated deeply with them and so carries
them beyond the ambit of person versus person conflict to (d)evolve into the more
alarming person versus self struggles.
This is case with the male-to-female transgender Caribbean-born but Toronto-raised
protagonist of Shani Mootoo’s 2015 fictional work, Moving Forward Sideways Like a
Crab. The vagaries of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, geography and social class become a
delicious milieu to interrogate language and affect in Mootoo’s literary craft along the
lines of a feminist research ethic with its attendant four-dimensional focus on
attentiveness to power, explicit boundaries, relational subjectivities and contextual
situatedness.
Since art mimics life and literature itself is mimetic, it would prove extremely interesting
to ascertain whether Mootoo’s work resonates with a real life transgender individual who,
like Mootoo’s protagonist, is Caribbean-born and East Indian but is transgendering from
male-to-female and is on the throes of deciding on corrective surgery. Does such an
individual find a kindred spirit in Mootoo’s character? Or does she generate a separate
and distinct gender identity that is the product of language and affect in the social
constructivist reality that is her own?
This paper seeks to interrogate experienced language and affect that has shaped the
gender identity and social realities of two transgender individuals – one fictional and one
real. The focus will also determine if parallels and divergences in experiences fraught
with the tensions, contentions and collisions that is a salient part of the transgender’s
everyday life is the legacy of language and paralanguage that has shared meanings in a
largely heteronormative community and the impact of this in the lives of the transgender
overwhelming minority. Further, the extent to which art mimics real life will be
examined since this paper further allows for rich comparisons in the overarching theme
of language and affect as it impacts on the transgender community.
Arguedas, Gabriela (University of Costa Rica) gaby.arguedas@yahoo.com and
Monserrath Sagot, (University of Costa Rica) msagotr@gmail.com
Queering the Concepts of Rights and Justice from a Central American Perspective
Is it possible to talk about sexual rights when people have been expelled from the very
category of humans by extreme conditions of dispossession, like the ones existing in
Central America, provoked by colonialism and Neoliberalism? What is the ontological
and ethical importance of a claim like egalitarian marriage when transgender people in
Central America have an average life expectancy of 35 years.
What is the meaning of a concept like the right to choose when a woman, particularly a
poor and racialized one, has to struggle for food and water every day in order to ensure
her survival. In a context of a biopolitics of instrumentalization of human existence and
disposability of many bodies, in this paper we will question the rights and justice
paradigms and its supposed challenge to unequal relations of power from an
intersectional queer/cuir perspective situated in Central America.
Barnes, Michael S. (Old Dominion University) mbarn002@odu.edu
The Regulation of Social Categories Through Drag Queens’ Use of ‘We’ and ‘They’
This study looks at the use of pronouns to regulate in-group and out-group status among
drag queens. Looking at interviews with three drag queens, the uses of ‘we’ and ‘they’,
their antecedents, and adjectival predicates were charted to see the distribution of the two
pronouns and what social categories the pronouns in question were representing. From
here, social categories were constructed using the different antecedents and features were
attributed to each category based on the adjectival predicates used. This data was then
analyzed to identify how the speakers were discursively constructing these social
categories along with the borders between them. The data indicated that a purely binary
in-out approach would not be substantial though, rather a more multifaceted view of
social categories would be needed in which each group can also have varying degrees of
subcategories that further differentiate it. These findings indicate an overlapping of many
different social categories with the individual identities being realized where specific
categories overlap. The two pronouns being considered reflected this distribution with the
first person plural pronoun being used only for the most central categories for the given
speaker with the third person plural pronoun used elsewhere Understanding how
individuals maintain these social categories through social interactions helps to better
understand how social categories are constructed in the first place and how people
cultivate an overall social identity. With a better understanding of social categories, we
might better understand ways in which people relate to one another.
Brown, Aaron w. (Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania)
amb39826@huskies.bloomu.edu
Lexical Issues and Identity Formation in Rural Central Pennsylvania Drag Queens
Most linguistic studies (Barrett 1998, 1999; Mann 2011) and many ethnographic studies
of drag queens have been focused on communities in more urban areas or areas with
long-standing, centralized drag communities (e.g., Taylor & Rupp 2008). However,
communities of drag queens exist across the United States and beyond, and while it is
well known that different genres of drag (e.g., camp, pageant, ballroom, etc.) are radically
different, it would certainly be problematic to assume that drag communities would not
be affected by the geographical areas they perform in as well. This study focuses on a
distinctly rural and spread-out, yet rather close-knit, drag queen community whose
members live and perform in rural central Pennsylvania. We expect that the rural setting
in which the drag queens live and perform will influence the creation of a unique type of
drag queen identity, perhaps signaled by a unique set of linguistic features.
As the initial stage of a research program aimed to investigate language, gender, and
identity in this specific community of drag queens (ultimately leading to an ethnographic
study of drag performances and backroom talk), this paper examines three issues
specifically located in the lexical domain, though the use of these features definitely have
wider social meaning. First, we explore the use of drag- kinship terminology, i.e., which
words (e.g., mother, sister, etc.) are being used and how their use reflects the values the
community places upon social organization. Second, we examine a wide range of lexical
items (some long-standing and traditional, others more innovative) associated with the
wider drag community (e.g., sickening, gagging, eleganza, etc.) and gauge the members
of this community’s knowledge of, use of, and attitudes towards these words. Last, as
drag communities appear to be a locus of innovative lexicon, we examine the role that
innovative terminology and resulting speech style has as a marker of prestige and social
position within this specific community.
We expect to see that age has an impact on the use of these lexical items by this
community. The members of this community have a wide age range (between 18 to over
50), and while mainstream drag culture (specifically the influence of the television
program RuPaul’s Drag Race) influences the lexicon of younger members, this may not
be so for the older members. Second, we predict that the lack of convenience to
commodities a city setting could offer to drag queens in urban locations will highlight an
even more unique way that rural drag queens use and reinvent language to form and
validate their identities.
Chambers, Eric (City University of New York) ericnchambers@gmail.com
Jocks and Coaches: A Linguistic Analysis of Talk on a Male Erotic Hypnosis Board
This presentation analyzes language use patterns among participants of an online
messageboard community who engage in a particularized form of kink/fetish practice:
male erotic hypnosis. Considering this messageboard as a distinct community of practice
(Wenger 1998) with its individualized community norms and patterns of language use, I
argue that identity presentation on this messageboard is centered around two 'poles' of
identity: the jock and the coach. Jock identities are (generally) characterized by a focus
on body-consciousness (i.e. working out), youth, a 'casual' attitude towards life, a desire
to be controlled by others, and a lack of intelligence. Coach identities, conversely, are
characterized by maturity, wisdom/intelligence, and a desire to control others. Using
Bakhtin's (1981) framework of heteroglossia, I argue that the construction of jock and
coach identities on this messageboard, and the linguistic forms that appear to support and
index these identities, are constructed as directly opposing each other. Through the
maintenance of these oppositions, jock and coach identities congeal into recognizable
identity types that are available for messageboard members to take stances toward or
against (cf. Du Bois 2007). Form-wise, jock and coach identities on this messageboard
are characterized by the presence or absence of specific orthographic tools that help to
index their identities. Two tools in particular will be discussed in this presentation:
adherence or non- adherence to standard American English (SAE) spelling and
capitalization rules. Jock language on this messageboard is characterized by a marked
non-adherence to SAE spelling and capitalization, while coach language is characterized
by a stricter adherence to SAE conventions. To demonstrate, an in- depth discussion of
one thread will illustrate how orthographic forms contribute to indexing jock and coach
identities on this messageboard, and how the maintenance of contrasts in both form and
content becomes especially important in the construction and negotiation of those
identities.
Chen, Sophia (New York University) sc3836@nyu.edu
Porn Piracy: Recontextualizing the Professional as Amateur
The vast majority of pornography is not paid for, but rather watched for free online.
Pornographic tube sites are among the most visited websites in the world; tube sites,
named for their similarity to YouTube, allow anyone to upload a video and make it
accessible to the general public. To circumvent copyright violation detection, videos are
often edited or intentionally mislabeled to obfuscate the original source. These changes
often remove important production markers that point to a pornographic scene’s
manufactured nature. I argue that this re-contextualization of pornographic scenes has a
tendency to present professionally produced porn as amateur sex tapes, bolstered by a
rising demand for “authentic sex” and commodified realism. This paper addresses the gap
between the porn that is being produced, and the porn that is being consumed. Porn
piracy has primarily been studied in terms of its economic and technological effects; this
paper attempts to explore the cultural impact of pirated porn. I use ethnographic data to
illustrate the difference in attitudes towards porn, and sex in general, between those who
pay for their porn and those who do not. Failure to recognize porn’s inherent theatrical,
manufactured aspects misleads audiences and allows for the building of incorrect
assumptions around sex and what is being depicted.
Cooper, Audrey (Gallaudet University) discorpo@gmail.com
“I don't mean to be a dick but…” : Categorization, Paralipsis and Getting Away With
Sexual Objectification in the Classroom
In this paper I use the occasion of student use of paralipsis in an undergraduate
anthropology course on sex, gender, and culture to explore the circumstances of sexual
self-censorship (or lack thereof) in college classrooms and teacher responses. Examining
one case example in depth in which a self-identified female student stated the desire not
to be a “dick,” then proceeded to negatively evaluate the behavior of another college
student to whom she also attributed female sexuality, I wondered: Why ‘dick’? What is
the scope of the rhetorical device DICK in social, symbolic, and political terms? And
what are the implications of dick disavowal for persons either possessing or desiring to
possess positive imaginaries and experiences associated with ‘dicks’? Placing the
ethnographic evidence in the context of Žižek’s (1997) underground libidinal economy
and the study of racism denial—such as van Dijk (1992) and Castagno (2008), as well as
increasingly transparent denials of racism and sexism on college campuses across the
U.S. (and the campus in question in particular)—this paper argues that DICK paralipsis is
an extremely effective rhetorical device, especially when deployed by ‘female’ students
in the college-as-consumption moment.
DICK indexes notions of ‘men’ as aggressive, ignorant, and sexually objectifying
thereby: 1) justifying dick disavowal through the supposed incontrovertibility of the
student’s professed sexual status, and 2) facilitating social ratification of dick disavowal
through the student’s professed distancing from DICK negativity. Ultimately the paper
argues that such DICK rhetoric constitutes a form of sexual violence directed at ‘male’
bodies and persons presumed to be male-identified, which nevertheless reproduces cisnormative hierarchies of binary sex that render ‘female’ bodies less productive than
‘male’ bodies under neoliberal capitalism. The implications of this preliminary analysis
for academic settings include: the importance of being aware of and addressing paralipses
in the moments they occur, and to address the specific forms that paralipsis takes—both
implied and potential associations, which likely involve multiple forms of social
categorization.
Cuba, Ernesto (CUNY Graduate Center) jcuba@gradcenter.cuny.edu
El hungarito: An Affective and Linguistic Resource of Transgender Women and Gay
Men in Peru
In this presentation I seek to analyze a sociolinguistic practice of some communities of
transgender women and gay men in the city of Lima (Peru), called el húngaro (‘the
Hungarian’) or el hungarito (‘the little Hungarian’). This particular use of local Spanish
is a morpho-phonological strategy to hide parts of discourse from other speakers, mainly
cisgender and straight people. El hungarito consists of the addition of the dummy
suffixes /VsVrV/ or /VksVrV/ in the final syllables of several words, where V represents
the vowels of said syllables. The result of this ‘anti-language’ tactic (Halliday 1976) is a
message that may exclusively be performed and understood by members of this
community of practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992). Also, it creates a
communicational safe space that protects its speakers from homophobic and transphobic
violence, for example, from police officers and customers of sex work (see Kulick 1998).
The following examples extracted from a TV news report convey the application of el
hungarito in two Spanish words:
amiga
(noun ‘female friend’)
no
(adverb ‘no’)
Base: /a mi ga/
Result: /a mi si ri ga sa ra/
Base:
Result:
/no/
/nok so ro/
I will analyze a scene of Lóxoro, a short film by Peruvian director Claudia Llosa (2011).
In this excerpt, Macuti, a middle-aged transgender woman, establishes a conversation
with other transgender sex workers in search of her adoptive daughter, Mia. All of them
codeswitch to el hungarito because they do not want the taxi driver to understand them. I
want to explore this interaction in the context of the film and the wider backdrop of
Peruvian sexual culture. My argument is that, like other secret codes (Baker 2002,
Goyvaerts 1994, Mendoza-Denton 2004), the dynamics of el hungarito surpass the sole
aim of invisibility. In clear contrast to its depiction in mainstream media, this code is a
linguistic resource that conflates multiple and conflicting communicational and emotional
goals. It is employed to share solidarity, joy, desire and wit, among others affects. I
situated my discussion in affect theory framework (Gregg & Seigworth 2010), and
particularly in its development in Latin American cultural contexts (Moraña & Sánchez
Prado 2012).
Darden, Matti (University of Pittsburgh)
matti.darden@gmail.com
Construction of (Trans) Masculinities through Pitch and Politeness
The use of pitch in politeness contexts by transgender men will be explored and
compared to speech by cisgender men and women, addressing the broader question of the
way that pitch and politeness are used as linguistic practices and resources to construct
masculinity by speakers, and how these masculinities may be meaningfully different. I
use interviews, involving role playing, self-reported anecdotes, and discussion about
personal politeness behavior, to elicit polite speech, and a subsequent survey to gather
information about self-descriptions of identity, gender practices, and attitudes. The
participants of the broader study will be transgender men, cisgender men, and cisgender
women. The goal of the study is to determine whether transgender men differ in their use
of pitch in politeness contexts, whether masculinity has an effect on this difference, and
what this means for trans men’s practice and construction of gender and masculinity. My
initial work on this topic involves analysis of a pilot study conducted using the outlined
methodology, which has reaffirmed that politeness is an important domain of gender
practice and demonstrated, crucially, that pitch in polite contexts can be a demarcating
aspect of masculine or feminine gender practice for speakers. Community interviews with
transmasculine individuals also suggest that awareness of pitch (in specifically polite
contexts) as an aspect of gender practice is varied. This research will contribute to the
representation of transgender people within sociolinguistics as a whole, building on the
work of masculinity studies and further incorporating the dimension of language, and will
begin to address some of the theoretical and implicitly political issues around how this
inclusion should take place.
Darr, Brandon Ray (University of Tennessee – Knoxville) bdarr@vols.utk.edu
Do They Use 'They'?: Gender-Neutral Pronoun Usage in Queer and Non-Queer
Populations
With increased social awareness of transgender and non-binary individuals,
universities across the nation have implemented policies, made suggestions for inclusive
language practices, and provided gender-neutral pronoun guides to avoid marginalizing
non-heterosexual, non-cisgender people by adjusting personal pronoun usage. The
reception to these measures has been mostly positive (Binkley 2015). At Harvard
University, more than one per cent of the student body have indicated preference for
gender-neutral pronouns through the campus registrar system. There has been little, if
any, resistance to more inclusive language options among colleges and universities.
However, some institutions have received more public opposition.
At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a gender-neutral pronoun guide was
released in a newsletter through the Office for Diversity & Inclusion, and within a week
the post was taken down after a storm of backlash from people who misunderstood not
only the intentions of the guide, but also their own subconscious usage of one genderneutral pronoun: singular they.
Studies (e.g., Shuy, Wolfram & Riley 1967 and Wolfram 1969) have shown that
certain linguistic forms are seen across all members of a group, but that these forms are
more noticeable if they are socially prestigious or stigmatized variants (Finegan &
Rickford 2004: 69). There are constraints on this variability such as age, ethnicity, the
conversation, region, and sex; however, the constraint of sex has so far only included
male and female, and it has not explored members of the queer community who would
not fall into the category of sex.
Thus, this study will reflect a comparison of third-person personal pronoun usage
between the queer community and the non-queer community, and how individual
perception and production are related to language ideology. Specifically, I will look at
three items: 1) general pronoun usage between the two communities; 2) the stratification
of pronoun usage within each community; and 3) the relationship between pronoun case
usage and referent. The study may provide insight into the gender neutrality that already
exists subconsciously in written and spoken language. I conclude with why genderneutral pronouns—and in general, more inclusive language—should be of importance to
educators, administrators, and policymakers.
Deml, Michael (Université de Genève)michaeljdeml@gmail.com
‘‘La seule arme qui peut vaincre le sida, c’est la recherche’’: The Lack of Social
Agency in a French HIV/AIDS Activism Campaign
In existence and fighting against AIDS and HIV since the early 1990s, the French
association Sidaction created a 2015 funding campaign whose slogan stresses the
importance of research in conquering this disease. In fact, the campaign’s slogan boldly
declares, “The only weapon that can vanquish AIDS is research.” The emphasis of this
paper will thus focus on the statement’s claim that it is only research that can trump
AIDS. While Sidaction’s statement, in its hyperbolic nature, serves to amass funds for
further scientific research, it nevertheless fails to take into account the agency of social
actors, Sidaction included, who play important roles in HIV/AIDS prevention in France.
In other words, scientific efforts and advances are glorified in this campaign to the
detriment of social public health efforts, which have been discursively nullified. This
Sidaction 2015 campaign privileges scientific research and completely casts aside social
aspects of prevention, which would include ground-level awareness building and
prevention campaigns targeted at those most at risk of contracting HIV.
This paper will more closely assess this campaign, its discourses and the lack of agency
they attribute to other social actors in France. In addition to providing a brief chronology
of HIV/AIDS and social interventions for prevention in France, I will present findings
from a content analysis of this specific campaign’s literature materials, including its
website and videos. The presentation’s focus will be structured around attempts at
answering the following questions: In what ways does this campaign mark a shift from
earlier AIDS and HIV activism efforts in France? How can this campaign’s rhetoric be
better understood within a French context? How can la recherche, as it is valorized in the
2015 Sidaction campaign, be analyzed as a metaphor for the centralized role of l’État
within France? This critique of Sidaction’s 2015 advertisement demonstrates ways in
which French Republican virtues of universalism can be called into question vis-à-vis
sexual identity, immigration, and communitarianism, especially in a world where
HIV/AIDS exists.
Ertman, Martha (University of Maryland Carey Law School)
mertman@law.umaryland.edu
The Language of Love, Contracts & Plan B Intimacy
Queer intimacies inspire and require new language. In my case, queer means having a
baby with a gay man then falling in love with a woman who raises the boy with us, all
with the help of written contracts and not-legally-binding exchanges that I call “deals.”
My book, Love’s Promises: How Formal & Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of
Families (Beacon Press 2015) braids memoir with legal materials to inspiration and
provide a blue print for others on or considering queer affiliations. The book starts with a
personal story about finding a home and family in my 40s, highlighting moments of
fashioning language to describe who my gay baby daddy, our son, and the woman who
becomes his second mother. I include moments of naming like calling ourselves an
“opposite-sex gay couple” in our coparenting agreement and writing a naming ceremony
that captures the motional and logistical truths that we are friends, not lovers. Even my
three-year-old insists on inventing language to describe his family, bestowing a role of
his own invention (“Gaty”) on the woman who becomes his second mother. It then
details how I progress from calling uncommon families “weirdo” to “Plan B,” and
contends that the state can, should, and often does support those families through legal
rules that honor freedom of contract in assisted conception, open adoption, cohabitation,
and premarital agreements. These linguistic innovations give voice to three truths: (1)
love comes in different packages; (2) contracts and deals shape those packages; and (3)
recognizing these exchanges hidden in plain sight helps law and society replace moral
judgment with a moral neutrality that values connection more than the particular shape it
takes.
Fejes, Fred (Florida Atlantic University) fejes@fau.edu
Generational Identity and the LGBTQ Community: An Oral History Approach
This presentation is based on “Generations,” an on-going oral history project of four
generations of members of the LGBTQ community in South Florida.
While numerous LGBTQ studies have explored the sexual, gender, racial, ethnic and
social class components of identity, attention to the nature of generational identity has
been rare. This presentation argues that the concept of generational identity presents a
very productive way to examine the LGBTQ community in the United States. German
sociologist Karl Mannheim defined a generation as a cohort of youth in the process of
reaching maturity in a particular time and place and whose social consciousness and
perspective are significantly influenced by the major historical conditions and events of
that era. Using this definition we broadly define four LGBTQ generations in post World
War II America: 1) The pre-Stonewall Generation (pre-1969) who lived in an era
when non-heterosexuality was defined as a deviance and perversion 2) The Stonewall
Generation (app 1969- 1982) whose experiences were marked by liberatory struggles,
explorations and expressions of their sexual identities 3) The AIDS generation (19821996) for whom AIDS was a central factor of their individual and communal
experiences, and 4) The Millennial Generation for whom a series of progressive changes
in their sexual status in society along with a major revolution in communication media
practices marked their experience of their sexuality.
At this point in the project oral histories are being taken of forty gay males, ten selected
from each generation and representing a cross section of racial, ethnic, and social class
backgrounds. In addition to open ended “life course” interviews, interviewees are being
asked to comment on a range of topics (early knowledge of same sex desire, support and
obstacles, perception of sexual identity, media influences, etc) in order to develop crossgenerational comparisons. Presentation will involve Powerpoint and audio excerpts from
the interviews.
Ford,JillianCarter(KennesawStateUniversity)jford43@kennesaw.edu
“Very simple. I don’t lie.”: The Role of Honesty in Black Lesbian Teachers’
Experiences the US Southeast
I conducted semi-structured interviews with seven self-identified Black lesbian classroom
teachers. Six participants taught in three districts the same large metropolitan area in the
US southeast; one participant taught in a smaller city in a bordering state. In response to
the vague prompt to describe the intersections between their sexuality and their schooling
experiences as a teacher, every participant spoke explicitly about their unwillingness to
lie about their sexuality if asked. In this paper, I argue that honesty is a critical
component of Black women’s experiences; the necessity of which can be tied to
womanism.
Gee, Seran (University of Toronto) solidarigee@gmail.com
Constraints on queerness: HIV Nondisclosure Criminalization and Exclusion from
Gay Sexual Space
This paper explores how the legal requirement for HIV positive men to explicitly disclose
their HIV status interferes with the cultural customs of silence in gay sexual spaces such
as bathhouses and parks. Because gay men negotiate sex wordlessly in spaces such as
bathhouses (Dean, 2009), the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure positions gay men
living with HIV/AIDS within a precarious conflict between legal obligation and cultural
expectation. Despite the custom of silence prior to engaging in sex, intimate relationships
form between and among sexual partners in gay sexual spaces (Dean, 2009). Participation
in these gay sexual spaces is the ethical work – a kind of homosexual ascesis – that
people perform through a multiplicity of relationships to recreate homosexuality not as a
way of desiring, but instead as desirable way of being (Dave, 2012; Foucault, 1994). As
such, the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure, which dislocates people living with
HIV/AIDS from gay sexual spaces, is a threat to homosexual ascetic practices of queer
relationality. However, these gay sexual spaces and their associated practices have
historically existed despite and in spite of legal condemnation. The question then
becomes, how does the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure influence how people living
with HIV/AIDS engage in this homosexual ascesis?
My research aims to identify how the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure influences
people’s participation in gay sexual spaces in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and what
their compliance and resistance with the law means for them as individuals in gay
communities as well as potentially criminal citizens whose only crime having sex as
people with legally abject bodies. To achieve this, I draw upon two cases studies to
provide examples of how gay men living with HIV/AIDS in Toronto can (1) excise
themselves from gay spaces with customs of sexual silence and find novel ways of
engaging in homosexual ascesis; or (2) strategically engage with individual mandates of
disclosure and silence in gay sexual spaces.
Giovagnoli, David (Illinois State University) dgiovagnoli@ilstu.edu
You Still Have to Assign Grades: A Queer Assessment Framework for Gay Men’s
English
While a seminar in gay men’s English is certainly an opportunity for bringing queer
themes into the classroom, a queer subject of inquiry is merely a first step towards a
“queer pedagogy”—assessments, assignment designs, and classroom practices that
support not only content knowledge but the ideologies of queer studies are necessary
(Luhmann, Zacko-Smith & Smith). This presentation will expand on the course
framework discussed by K. Aaron Smith in the previous presentation for its Fall 2016
iteration, with focus on a student-centered assessment methodology that promotes agency
and metacognition through choice and strategic deconstructions of the student-instructor
binary. In addition, this presentation will discuss strategies that can be used to “sell” a
queer pedagogy, not only to administrators but also to fellow instructors, through an
exploration of how an interdisciplinary perspective is preferable to a disciplinary “pure”
perspective for an examination of queer language, and consequently how this
interdisciplinary perspective is portable to other subjects (David et al).
Glaunert, Johnny (University of Wisconsin La Crosse) glaunert.john@uwlax.edu
Exposing the Oppressor Within: Heteronormative Language Attitudes among Gay
Men in Buenos Aires
Recent gay rights victories such as marriage equality in the US and Argentina have
prompted activists and scholars alike to revisit issues of gender-based exclusion
within gay male spaces. In this presentation, I will discuss data gathered from 47
language attitudes surveys and interviews with straight and gay men in Buenos Aires
as part of a grant-funded undergraduate research project conducted in the spring of
2015. Utilizing a modified matched-guise technique, I created Reader and Listener
Attitudes surveys specifically designed to examine heteronormative language
attitudes, or normative language attitudes regarding gender and/or sexuality, among
straight and gay men in Argentina. My findings revealed a higher degree of
heteronormative language attitudes among straight men, who consistently rated
assertive female authors as more vulgar, inappropriate, and less respectful than
identical male authors. These findings conform with my prediction that, due to prior
contemplation of gender norms, gay men would express fewer normative language
attitudes than their straight counterparts. Gay participants did, however, articulate
similar attitudes during the oral interviews that I conducted post-survey. Several gay
men expressed a particular contempt for women in positions of power, claiming that
female employers are more bossy, demanding, and unpredictable than male
employers. I will discuss how these findings compare with prior research on
language attitudes and gender, as well as provide suggestions for further research on
heteronormative language attitudes among gay men.
Green, Eric (University of California Santa Cruz) errgreen@ucsc.edu
The Experience of Gay Men Being Socialized Into Gay Communities
This research uses a phenomenological methodology to ask: how do gay men in the
United States experience becoming socialized into gay communities, and what is the role
of language in that experience? Rooted in educational, language socialization, and
linguistic theory I ultimately center my work around educational researchers Jean Lave
and Etienne Wenger (1991), who have constructed a theory around situated learning and
legitimate peripheral participation. Conceptualizing a “gay community” as a site for
informal education and situated learning, I position socialization into the community as
the development of identity; and as Lave and Wenger (1991) assert, “learning involves
the construction of identities” (p. 53). For my research, I therefore examine what the role
of language is with the experience of socialization. To conduct my research, I plan to
utilize a phenomenological methodology as my framework. Specifically, I will be
focusing on the concept of Heuristic Inquiry (Douglass and Moustakas, 1985; Moustakas,
1990; Patton, 2002), where the researcher asks “what is my experience of this
phenomenon and the essential experience of others who also experience this phenomenon
intensely?” (Patton, 2002, p. 107). I will solicit participants from three local gay sports
groups on a self-selecting, voluntary basis, using nonproportional quota sampling to get
5-10 participants from each site, aiming to get men who represent a variety of ages,
race/ethnicities, education levels, and social-economic statuses. Within my
phenomenological methodology, I intend to use qualitative methods. Specifically, I will
be focusing on conducting semi-structured depth interviews, supplemented by
participatory and non-participatory observations.
Guerrero, Mario (York University) mguerrero3@fordham.edu
Grindr and the Commodification of the Self: A Toronto, Canada Case Study
The present study focuses on self-presentation on Grindr, a location-based
application (app) available for any handheld device since 2009, which allows men to
connect with other gay or bisexual men nearby. Recently, personal ads and related dating
services have been revolutionized with the advancement of technology and geosocial
networking (Grov et al., 2014). These ads have received a fair amount of attention in
language and gender research, however online dating apps –such as Grindr– have made it
easier for gay men to meet other gay men transcending geography and thus becoming a
topic of interest for researchers (Blackwell et al., 2015). I draw on Gidden’s (1991)
concept of commodification in such contexts and analyze written texts as discursive
practices on Grindr profiles, showing how 40 White and 40 Asian gay men commodify
themselves using this app in the Greater Toronto Area. The data were collected for one
time period on three subsequent weekends from one location in order to control for as
many variables as possible. I analyze the use of linguistics strategies used by gay White
men or by gay Asian men in self- commodification, including hedges, imperatives,
questions, abbreviations, and sexual references in the texts. Results suggest that Asian
men in this study tend to commodify themselves by referring to more social, platonic and
romantic qualities whereas White men tend to focus more on physical attributes of the
masculine body along with professional and romantic characteristics.
Hadodo, Matthew John (University of Pittsburgh) MJH145@pitt.edu
Entre cabrones y cabritos: The Diminutive as an Index of Potential Gay Style in
Madrid Spanish
This study examines the perception and use of the diminutive as an index of sexuality in
the Madrid dialect. The diminutive is a highly productive morphological form in many
Spanish varieties, although it is less common (and thus more marked) in north-central
Spain. Additionally, previous studies on gendered speech suggest that females favor the
use of the diminutive since it establishes “dependency relationships or emotional ties.”
Therefore, this investigation sought to determine if higher frequencies of diminutivized
forms in Madrilène male speech indexed an effeminate or gay percept. Results from
online questionnaires suggest that males’ use of the diminutive index a potential gay
style, regardless if the speaker in question identifies as homosexual or otherwise.
Holton, Angela (Syracuse University) amholton@syr.edu
Don’t Fast-Forward: A Goffmanian Analysis of the Pre-Coital Discourse in
Mainstream and Feminist Pornography
This paper analyzes the readily overlooked, but most linguistically rich, aspect of
pornography: the pre-coital interviews. Using Conversation Analysis, the author works
to compare and contrast the pre-coital interviews in both a feminist and mainstream
porn. Both videos analyzed, (1) star adult film actress, Sasha Grey; (2) feature
heterosexual sex; and (3) are hosted on Pornhub.com. The mainstream video, “Sasha
Grey 18-year-old Sweety,” features a young Grey interviewed by an unnamed male.
The scene is premised on the notion that Grey, a new-to-porn 18-year-old, loves anal
sex and wants penetrate the adult film world. This interview is made to appear as a job
interview, of sorts; a way in which the audience can linguistically preview the sex acts
about to take place—linguistic foreplay. The feminist pre-coital porn interview, on the
other hand, features both the female and male actors. The interviewer is never
explicitly heard by the audience (questions can be inferred vis a vis the answers) and
there is no premise on which the interview is based—here, the interview functions as
just that: an interview. The essay begins with a brief description of both the
mainstream and feminist porn genres. Using Conversation Analysis, the author then
outlines the linguistic differences and similarities in Grey’s interviews—ultimately
attributing these differences to the disparate overarching goals of the two interviews.
Lastly, the author argues that the interviews can be seen as microcosmic
representations of their larger genre context.
Itakura, Kyohei (University of California - Davis) kitakura@ucdavis.edu
Orgasm from Mistranslation?: The Consumption of Japanese Gay Video Porn Among
English Language Speakers
My ethnographic work spotlights audience reception of such cultural artifacts as
pornography in the digital age, as I examine the multi-sensory consumption of Japanese
gay video porn among English-language speakers (ELSs). The advent of the Internet has
facilitated the global circulation of Japanese gay video porn. Today, major production
companies (e.g., Japan Pictures) run bilingual downloading websites, while general
consumers often illegally upload video clips on cyberspaces including Pornhub
(http://www.pornhub.com). Thus, Japanese gay video porn has become widely available
to anyone with Internet access, even those who reside outside Japan and speak no
Japanese. Building on relevant work (e.g., Williams 2004; Lehman 2006; Attwood 2010;
Garlick 2011), I investigate how ELSs, whether in or outside Japan, consume Japanese
gay video porn, through my non-participatory cyber-ethnography (Boellstorff et al. 2012)
anchored in multimodal analysis (Pérez-González 2014). My cyber-ethnography consists
of online exploration, textual analysis, and in-depth interviews with non-Japanese (and
Japanese) consumers. Remarkably, “gay” sex appears largely absent from Japanese gay
video porn, as it primarily eroticizes straightness rather than gayness by representing
male-female sex as well as same-sex sex among male actors—differentiated in terms of
multiple factors (status, occupation, age, etc.) both discursively and audiovisually. Yet
ELSs complacently translate―or better put, mistranslate―Japanese gay video porn by
projecting their fantasies about egalitarian gay affection onto Asian men. My
anthropological work raises issues of audiovisual translation and multi-sensory pleasure
in cultural debates about pornography.
Kalinay, Justin ( Simmons College) kalinay@simmons.edu
Phoenix Fire, Lightning Bolts, and Mnemonic Prodigies: A Mutational Archive of
Trauma
This paper will apply trauma theory, specifically the creation and interpretation of an
archive of trauma, to Marvel Entertainment’s X-men comics. My goal for this paper is to
situate comics as an important medium for identity relation and construction. I believe
that X-men comics in particular offer a rich site for the examination of how multiple
forms of subaltern identity are handled by those who are “the norm.” Concurrently, I will
point out how when viewed as an archive the X-men comics can create a timeline of
(mis)understanding adversity and oppression and the myriad ways in which affective
behavior and the habituation of recognizing trauma can be applied to its resistance. Eve
Sedgewick is used to explore the ways in which the medium of comics, as a form of
media within popular culture, aid in the construction and maintenance of a sense of
identity, individual and/or communal. Ann Cvetkovich’s An Archive of Feeling provides
a template for utilizing “marginal” and “idiosyncratic” sites of trauma to form an archive,
as well as the various intersections of trauma with identity. Jason Zingsheim’s theory of
“mutational identity,” aids in viewing and understanding the multiple evolutions and
mutations of the X-men over time, specifically their positions as subjects with regard to
race, gender, sexuality and citizenship. Finally, the cultural theories of John Fiske are
used to place the X-men archive as a point of not only empathetic identity construction
but as a form of semiotic resistance on both a micro and macro level.
Karimi, Aryan (University of Alberta) akarimi1@ualberta.ca
Hamjensgara: Iranian Gays’ Terminologies in Relation to Local and Global Sexual
Discourses
Much has been written on the history and transformations of gender and sexuality in Iran
(Afary, 2009; Moghissi, 2008; Sedghi, 2007; Najmabadi, 2005; Mir-Hosseini, 2004;
Yeganeh, 1993; Moghadam, 1988) or among Iranian Diaspora (Shakhsari, 2012; Kalami,
2011; Papan-matin, 2009) in relation to nationalism, modernization and Islamization of
the country. However, except for a few cases that directly (Karimi, 2014; Korycki &
Nasirzadeh, 2014) or indirectly (Jafari, 2014; Najmabadi, 2013; Mahdavi, 2012; Fayaz,
2010) look at different issues related to Iranian homosexuals, the current situation for
Iranian gays in relation to the history of nationalism, gender and sexual politics and
family regulations is absent in Iranian studies literature.
To fill this gap, this paper aims to analyze Iranian gay men’s current approaches toward
their sexual identity. I dissect the terminology used among Iranian gays, Hamjensgara
and Gay in particular, to show how gay men are situating themselves within local and
global discourses of sexuality. Such identities are directly related to local gender and
family structure while drawing upon Western epistemology to understand who is a
homosexual person. This puts Iranian gay men, Hamjensgarayan, in between traditional
or local cultural structures on the one hand and international discourses on homosexuality
(Altman, 1996) and gay rights (Stychin, 2004) on the other hand. This is similar to what
has been revealed in studies of homosexual identities in South East Asian (Philips, 2014;
Philips, 2013; Yue & Zubillaga-Pow, 2012; Dave, 2010; Tan & Jin, 2007; Manalansan,
2003; Grewal & Kaplan, 2001) and few African (Munro, 2012; Hoad, 1999; Amory,
1997) countries.
Kenneman, Margaret (University of Tennessee-Knoxville) mkeneman@utk.edu
The Price of Accuracy: Overemphasizing Gender When Teaching French Grammar in
the FL Classroom
The teaching of French as a foreign language to adult learners (i.e., students who are
beginning their study of the French language in college) is often a practice where
gendered dynamics at the linguistic (and often intrapersonal) level inhibit the language
learner from speaking in the target language and ultimately inhibit learning development.
These gendered dynamics that hinder the language learner unravel due to a continued
emphasis on acute grammatical accuracy at the earliest levels of studying French as a
foreign language. This emphasis might be traced back to the presence of the “idealized
native speaker” that lingers in foreign language classrooms in North American
institutions.
This paper will elaborate on research that disputes the use of native speaker standards by
investigating an angle related to gender and sexuality. Specifically, this paper will unpack
how gender is stressed in grammar teaching according to precise native speaker norms.
However, in a world that is reconsidering what it means to be male and female, this paper
will challenge the need for this level of accuracy when learning a foreign language as an
adult. In other words, this paper will question whether or not it is necessary to penalize
students when they make mistakes with subject/adjective or subject/past participle
agreement. Although these are mistakes from a grammatical perspective, they rarely have
major implications when it comes to constructing meaningful discourse.
Finally, this paper will discuss what is at stake when drawing attention to specific
grammatical “mistakes.” In particular, the emphasis on subject/adjective and subject/past
participle agreement can be extremely confusing to a gender nonconforming individual.
Furthermore, the obsession with subject/adjective and subject past/participle agreement
inhibits all foreign language learners from taking risks and diving into the fruitful act of
communication with others, which should happen regardless of minor grammatical
errors.
Knisely, Kris (University of South Dakota) krisknisely@gmail.com
Language Learner Identity: Framing Applied Linguistics Research with French
Cultural Studies
At present, there appears to be general disinterest in learning modern foreign languages in
the US, which is particularly marked in French. Contributing to this disinterest are
language ideologies that situate the learning of certain languages, including French, as
inappropriate for many. Attitudes regarding speakers of French and Francophone cultures
are an integral component of these language ideologies. Through actions and words,
individuals stake claim to identities and subjectivities; consciously or sub-consciously,
they tell others who they are. To the same degree, individuals tell themselves who they
are and attempt to embody their identities and subjectivities. Language learners must
contend with their sense of self, the perceptions of others, and stereotypes of the target
language.
Language is culture, however the fields of Applied Linguistics and Cultural Studies have
often remained distinct. This paper explores how framing an Applied Linguistics study
on language attitudes within the field of French Cultural Studies may provide new and
fruitful ways of considering how individual self-perceptions and perceptions of the
French language and culture may be contributing to such disinterest in learning French as
a second language.
The study reexamined through the lens of French Cultural Studies was conducted at a
private, urban research university in the southeastern US. The sample included 50
undergraduates (36 male, 14 female). The study consisted of focus groups (7) and
interviews (4). Data analysis included three levels of coding followed by the use of
broader discourse analysis techniques.
Kramer, Elsie (University of Illinois, Urbana) eakramer@illinois.edu
Is Female to Male as Omega is to Alpha?: Metaphors of Sex and Gender in
Omegaverse Fan Fiction
A subgenre of (frequently pornographic) fanfiction called “Omegaverse” is often
regarded — even by fanfic readers — as especially bizarre and marginal, despite its
ubiquity. Omegaverse fic introduces a dimension of social differentiation that resembles
gender but crosscuts it; in addition to being classified as male or female, every individual
is also classified as alpha, beta, or omega, based on his/her physiology. A/B/O
classification has implications for reproductive contribution (omegas, whether male or
female, can bear children), sexual behavior (omegas generally play the receptive role in
penetrative sex), and social behavior (alphas are stereotyped as aggressive, omegas as
passive). In one sense, A/B/O dynamics are a fetishization of gender dynamics — a
reductio ad absurdum metaphor for heterosexual gender roles. In a genre of fiction where
a majority of romantic pairings are male-male, A/B/O dynamics impose a quasiheteronormative framework on same-sex relationships and sexual interactions. But at the
same time, A/B/O dynamics are a form of gender-queering — a way of blurring the
boundaries between male and female by making it possible for an individual to be, in a
sense, both. And writers and readers often use A/B/O dynamics to metaphorically explore
gender discrimination, sexual attraction, consent, and other feminist issues.
Omegaverse fic is therefore frequently both pornographic and political; at the same time
that people write and read it for titillation, it also provides a space for people to implicitly
critique sexual and gender ideologies that seem inescapably rigid in the real world. By
metaphorically transducing gender into a new social category, omegaverse writers make
the feminist stakes of pornography explicit, in more ways than one.
Lane, Nikki (American University ) cl5067a@student.american.edu
Feeling at Home: Black Queer Women's Narratives and Geographies of Intimacy
In this paper, I use linguistic analyses of affect to "map" the dimensions of black queer
women's (BQW) scene spaces in Washington, D.C. Relying on ethnographic and
linguistic data collected during 2012-2014, I offer analyses of BQW negotiating their
"place" in Washington, D.C. Paying particular attention to instances where BQW
describe being in BQW's scene spaces, I discuss how these stories of belonging (or not)
in the cosmopolitan urban landscape--what I refer to as "narratives of intimacy"--paint a
vivid picture of the geographies available to BQW in D.C. and the diverse ways that they
express their racialized sexuality.
Leap, William (American University) wlm@american.edu
Queer refusal
Queer refusal marks an engagement with normative authority shaped by
noncooperation or disinterest or indifference, rather than submission, resistance or the
“working (transformation-displacement) of the subject form” frequently labeled
disidentification. Normative authority may or may not be affected by such assertions, but
refusal “doesn’t care.” Manon has similarly theorized practices of refusal in a recent
discussion of “stubborn queerness.” Edelman’s “no future” and Berlant’s “cruel
optimism” also apply here. But the point of analysis is not to typologize refusal’s social
and linguistic properties or to subordinate them beneath some inclusive rubric. Even
“queer refusal” becomes a suspiciously general category in this analysis, given the
social conditions promoting particular forms of indifference and the significance of the
specific formation “at the site.”
Lecker, Michael (George Mason University) mlecker@gmu.edu
Affective Drag: Queerness Beyond Shame
Within contemporary US culture, wearing clothing of the “opposite” gender signifies a
sexual difference within the wearer. This is a residual logic derives from the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century sexologist figure of “the invert,” whose same-sex
desire came from not a sexual dysfunction, but a gendered one. The invert had a gender
incongruent body and soul/mind. This incongruence revealed itself through the outward
expression of femininity in men and masculinity in women. Despite the disappearance of
this understanding of same-sex desire, wearing clothing and engaging in behaviors
associated with the gender not assigned at birth still signals a queerness in individuals.
And because queerness is still degraded, dominant heterosexual and assimilationist
LGBT cultures view gender transgressive acts, behaviors, and identities (such as
effeminacy) as demeaning, stereotypical, unattractive, monstrous, and shameful.
Concurrently, a prominent strain of queer theory positions shame and other negative
affects as the central affects to queer subjectivity. Through examining literature, they
frame the wearing of queer signifying clothing as an act of self-abasement and selfdegradation as queerness is inherently shameful.
The Radical Faeries, however, counter the registers and logics of masculinist and
heterosexist values, identities, and aesthetics and counter queer theory’s framing of
queerness as exclusively negatively felt. A key way Radical Faeries participate in their
culture, spirituality, and community is by wearing drag. Specifically, they wear skagdrag
or genderfuck drag and engage in this practice with levity and joy. This form of drag
intentionally mixes gender signs and clothing not to attempt to pass as one particular
gender, but instead to obviously code themselves as queer. They do so most often in
communal and ritual settings. Consequently, they elevate queerness and the practice of
wearing drag to culturally and spiritually important practices. This creates a way for
Radical Faeries to transform their relationship with queerness and effeminacy away from
dominant cultural norms and aesthetics, which devalue such traits, and towards a positive
register.
In this presentation, I use information gathered through participant observation
and individual interviews to document Radical Faeries’ affective relationship with drag
and effeminacy. I focus on how so many Radical Faeries expressed discomfort, hatred, or
shame of effeminacy and gayness before becoming Radical Faeries. They described an
engrained self-hatred or a sense of purposelessness. Through the Faeries’ playful
approach to elevating drag (and therefore queerness) as a communal and spiritual tool,
they were able to work through and with their shame. This allowed these Radical Faeries
to see culturally demeaned effeminacy and queerness not as exclusively shameful, but
also as possible sources of pride and dignity. By elevating drag to a culturally and
spiritually significant practice Radical Faeries reframe obvious queerness and effeminacy
as prideful.
LeWitt, Rachel (Lafayette College) rlewitt@gmail.com
Boleh gay: The Effect of ‘Sarawak for Sarawakians’ on Linguistic Prestige in
Sarawak’s Queer Speech Communities
Like other minority speech communities, queer speakers have carved a dialect all their
own out of pre-existing language: “another mother tongue” (Grahn 1984). This is perhaps
especially true of LGBTQ speakers in Sarawak, Malaysia, for whom an ever-shifting mix
of language, culture, and religion is already ubiquitous. Simultaneously, Sarawak is
undergoing its own pseudo-nationalistic identity transformation, bolstered by an
independence movement that has empowered indigenous communities politically. In this
paper, I will address how indigenous queer speakers hierarchize virtual and in-person
language within Sarawak’s polyglotism. I am also interested in investigating whether the
movement for independence has fueled a parallel linguistic empowerment of
marginalized languages. This discussion will be informed primarily by sociolinguistic
interviews, and will be supplemented by extant scholarship on global queer speech
communities, Sarawak-specific research on indigenous peoples, and news articles
examining the changing political face of Sarawak. Previous work on queer communities
has neither addressed issues of language prestige nor touched on how (indigenous)
independence movements impact language choice. By conducting this research, a broader
understanding of multi-faceted linguistic empowerment will be reached. This knowledge
will extend beyond the queer community in Sarawak, but will likely shed light on how
increased authority affects the language (and linguistic options) of marginalized
communities more generally.
Mann, Stephen L. (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse) smann@uwlax.edu
Locating the “Q” in Inclusive Excellence: Non-normative Gender and Sexuality in
Undergraduate Catalogs and General Education Curricula
Inclusive Excellence (IE) is a framework adopted by many universities across the United
States. According to the University of Wisconsin System, IE “is a planning process
…[whose] central premise … holds that [academic institutions] need to intentionally
integrate their diversity efforts into the core aspects of their institutions,” including
“academic priorities, leadership, quality improvement initiatives, decision-making, dayto-day operations, and organizational cultures.” In this presentation, I will discuss a new
long-term project in which I am exploring how the ideologies present in the IE
framework, especially as they pertain to “academic priorities” within the purview of
academic affairs, do (or do not) reveal themselves in actual practice -- or, more
specifically, actual linguistic practice. How and to what extent are these ideologies
present in the language of catalogs, syllabi, class lectures, and class discussions? The
presentation will first outline the project as a whole: scope, goals, methodologies, and
timeline. The primary focus of the presentation, however, will be preliminary findings
from the first phase of the project: a corpus linguistic analysis of an undergraduate
catalog in which I examine language related to non-normative gender and sexuality.
Because it documents academic requirements -- e.g., general education, major, minor -the catalog could be viewed as a repository of the “academic priorities” of an institution. I
will discuss how an analysis of word counts, affixation, and collocations within an
undergraduate catalog can provide insight into the level of success of a university’s IE
initiatives and -- more specific to the themes addressed at Lavender Languages and
Linguistics -- the extent to which non-normative gender and sexuality are “included” as
part of a university’s implementation of Inclusive Excellence practices
Mayernick, Jason (University of Maryland) jmayerni@umd.edu
Gay Teachers Association of New York City and the Boundaries of American
This paper is a historical analysis of the way the Gay Teachers Association discussed
themselves and their opponents from 1978 to 1989 in their monthly newsletter. Founded
in 1974 to advance the cause of gay and lesbian teachers in America’s largest city the
GTA actively lobbied the United Federation of Teachers and defended the compatibility
of being homosexual and an educator. Because of their centrality to the educational
process and daily contact k-12 teachers have historically been subjected to the policing of
their private lives, professional behavior, and freedom of speech. This is nowhere more
apparent than in the case of LGBT teachers. This paper advances assertions by Cannady
in “Straight State” that the state had a vested interest in defining acceptability through
sexuality. I argue that there was, and is, nothing more American or “ordinary” than an
elementary school teacher. By contesting what was acceptable for a teacher the GTA
pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable for Americans as a whole. What concerned
these teachers, what they thought was achievable, and how they expressed those
possibilities expanded the boundaries ordinary. This paper traces the expansion of those
boundaries over the course of 11 years growing from initial tentative forays into politics
to rhetorically nuanced assertions of belonging.
Melgar, Jonathan (The Graduate Center- City University of New York)
jonathan.e.melgar@gmail.com
Anal Pornographic Images in Heterosexual Spaces: Towards a Queer Reading of
Central American Short Stories
Latin American queer theory and studies have been growing since the 1990s, and their
primary focus of research has been in understanding the diverse, but complex reaction to
sexuality, especially in South America and the Caribbean. Nevertheless, it is worth
discussing that Central America has received little, if any, attention. Central American
scholarship, in recent decades, has revolved around the response of post-war
representations in literature, such as destruction and violence (Villalobos-Ruminott,
2013; Mackenbach & Ortiz-Wallner, 2008), testimony (Zimmerman, 2006; Craft, 1997),
and disenchantment and cynicism (Córtez, 2000 & 2010). As a result of the lack of queer
studies and the scarcity of queer literatures in Central America, I analyze heterosexual
literature (spaces) in which there is a common thread that can be interpreted as a nonheterosexual normative way of portraying pornographic images. In particular, I pay close
attention to the depictions of anal penetrations in three short stories: 1) “Solitos en todo el
universo” or “Us Alone in the Entire Universe” (1995); 2) “Paredes delgadas” or “Thin
Walls” (2009) by the Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, and 3) “Ascensor” or
“Elevator” (2001) by the Guatemalan writer Maurice Echeverría. In doing so, I use
Riobó’s theory (2013) of the anal (fisting) as alternative way to subvert the phallocentric
discourse in Latin American literature and Sáez & Carrosca’s (2011) and Preciado’s
(2000 & 2008) accounts of the anal as a communality trait that breaks the sexual binary
in order to generate a queer reading of anal pornographic images within a hegemonic
literacy space, that is Central American literature.
Milani, Tommaso (University of the Witwatersrand) Tommaso.Milani@wits.ac.za
Banal homonationalism: Tel Aviv Pride and its discontents
Israel has recently marketed itself internationally as a gay friendly tourist destination.
Also known as pinkwashing, such a branding strategy works by roping sexual diversity
into nation-state discourses in such a way that Israel presents itself to the rest of the world
as a beacon of sexual liberalism in the Middle East. In such a way, Israel seeks to obscure
or even erase its oppressive and neo-colonial politics against Palestinians. Needless to
say, this project of nation branding is underpinned by strong capitalist imperatives in that
the marketing of a gay friendly Israel ultimately aims at attracting a large number of
‘pink’ consumers from around the world. One of the most patent manifestations of this
nationalist/consumerist project is Tel Aviv Pride, which, according to Israeli media,
attracted over 20,000 foreign tourists for its 20th anniversary in 2013.
Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to offer a critical reading of the circuit of
discourses surrounding Israeli pinkwashing. More specifically, we draw upon a queer
multimodal discourse analytical framework in order to deconstruct both media texts that
publicize Tel Aviv Pride as well as ethnographic data collected during the 2013 pride
parade itself. Essentially, the paper illustrates the discursive strategies through which
sexual diversity is co-opted into nation-state agendas; it also unpacks the many forms of
“banal” (Billig 1995) expertise that are marshalled together to give legitimacy to this
nationalist project. At the same time, the paper illustrates some examples of “sexual
cityzenship” (Milani 2015), that is, insurgent moments of contestation in which
individuals make use of the affordances of the built environment in order to create
punctures in hegemonic processes about sexual diversity and sexual rights.
Murphy, Drew ( Limerick Institute of Technology) Drew.Murphy@lit.ie and Lisa
O’Rourke Scott (Limerick Institute of Technology) Lisa.Scott@lit.ie
Negotiating Double Trouble: A Critical Discursive Analysis of Identity Formation
Amongst Gay and Bi-Sexual Men in Ireland
Over the past two decades, Connell’s (1995) notion of how masculinity is
performed has formed the basis of much scholarship pertaining to not just feminist issues,
but also those issues regarding Queer identities and performativity. Connell suggests that
although there are multiple expressions of masculinity, these are all subservient to the
dominant discourse of hegemony. A key component of performance for men striving to
achieve the pinnacle of hegemony is the appearance of heterosexuality. The notion of
assumed heterosexuality or heteronormativity is so very ingrained in society that a
dilemma arises for gay and bisexual men to form a masculine identity that does not
conflict with their own gender expression. This paper will discuss the theoretical
framework behind a two year research programme commencing with the Genders and
Sexualities research group in LIT that explores the ways in which Gay and Bi-Sexual
men in Ireland interpret very different masculine stereotypes, and how this influences the
overall formation of an identity. The vast majority of scholars in the field suggest that
Ireland remains very much patriarchal, with a dominant discourse of identity performance
that is comparable to the nature of hegemonic masculinity. However, it has been
suggested that the passing of the marriage equality referendum, as well as the Gender
Recognition Act (2015) has led to a sense of liberation infusing the nation, prompting us
evaluate the ways in which we understand gender performance and identity and leading
to a possible shift in hegemony (Lacey, 2015). The current research will explore
masculinities in a way that has not previously been investigated in Ireland, specifically by
seeking to understand how Gay and Bi-Sexual men in Ireland negotiate very different
masculine identities. Using a qualitative research lens, this research is based on the
observation of the socially constructed world in which we live. Since hegemonies
themselves are social constructs, this method is most appropriate as it seeks to interpret
participants’ views of masculinities in a time where perceptions may be shifting. Within
this framework, this research will take on a largely constructionist approach, integrating
aspects of the social science perspective of postmodernism. Data will be collected
through the use of semi-structured interviews and focus groups, which will then be
analysed utilising methods informed and developed from critical discourse analysis. This
approach will not only allow critical examination of the ways in which language is used
to produce and reproduce particular ways of performing masculine identities, it will also
allow for a more in depth analysis of the impact these masculine archetypes are having on
the men who perform them. The aim of this paper is to explore the research that has
informed the current study, as well as discuss hypothesised outcomes and the impacts this
research will have on the study of queer masculinities in Ireland.
Murphy , Michael (Independent scholar) MikeMurphyDC@comcast.net
Archival Sources of Insight into Gay Lfe and Language in the US During the Century
before Stonewall
My chief research interest is gay life before Stonewall, which requires a different
research approach than more contemporary investigations. An absolute wealth of
information is scattered around the country in unexpected places that provides important
glimpses of what gay life was like in just about every decade of the last century.
Correspondence and interviews dating from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s provide valuable
glimpses of the lives and language of the times. Diaries are especially valuable, and
while rare are not entirely unknown. Court records combined with local newspaper
coverage provide an often-fascinating view into the details of life. Trial transcripts and
prison records, which often included photos and detailed physical descriptions of men,
turn generic names into real, three-dimensional people who came before us.
Untold thousands of men and women have paid astonishingly high prices over the
generations for simply being themselves. As I’ve found their names, it has pained me
that they are largely forgotten to history. What started as a biography of one preStonewall activist several years ago, has morphed into a biographical accounts of as
many people as I can identify.
My goal is to document as completely as possible at least one person from each decade
for the last 150 years. The stories I have found are not always pretty, but we are where
we are today because of those who have gone before us, and those people deserve to be
remembered.
Murray, Katherine (Georgetown University) kam373@georgetown.edu
"I Grew up Knowing How to Talk Female:" Navigating Transmasculine Gender
Identities through Communicative Change
This work serves as a qualitative study about how transgender men view the relationship
between their communication and their gender identities. Six transgender men were
interviewed for this study about their communication styles before and after transitioning
from living full-time presenting as women to living full-time presenting as men.
Interview questions targeted specific linguistic features and interaction patterns based on
findings from earlier studies on language and gender. The analysis of this study finds that
transgender men make conscious changes to their communication and discourse
strategies based on their personal beliefs and dominant ideologies of masculinity and
femininity in language. Specific features that participants described as targets for change
include the use of address terms, swearing, conversational topics, asserting opinions,
challenging others, making requests, conversational maintenance, emotion in
communication, intonation, voice, and embodied communication. Findings demonstrate
that participants reported changes that reflect findings from earlier studies
describing how women and men speak (e.g. Coates, 2013; Holmes, 1995; Maltz &
Borker, 1982; Tannen, 1990), as many of their reported communicative changes reflected
that they had adapted communication styles that have been described as characteristic of
men’s language (e.g. Coates, 2013; Holmes, 1995; Kiesling, 2004). One possible
implication of this study may be that communication training may not be necessary for
transgender speakers if they are already making deliberate changes to styles of the
opposite gender. This work expands the scope of language and gender studies by
addressing the discursive practices of people with non-normative gender identities, who
are currently underrepresented in the language and gender literature.
Olivera, Guillermo (University of Sterling) guillermo.olivera@stir.ac.uk
Queer Adolescence in Argentine Film: Heterotopias, Space and the Logic of the Beside
This paper seeks to explore the emergence of adolescent non-heteronormative sexualities
in contemporary Argentine Cinema through an analysis of heterotopian spaces as other,
yet ‘actually existing counter-sites’ that contradict, everyday, ‘normal’ sites, at the same
time as they bear some ‘mirroring’ or ‘designating’ relationship to both (real) normregulated places of Society and (non-real) utopian spaces (Foucault). Heterotopias lend
themselves to encounters with the other and otherness, as well as to conceive spaces
across the subaltern/s, in complex ways Although the emergence of queer heterotopian
spaces recurs in a considerable number of post-2000 Argentine films, and is thus
applicable to a wider corpus, including movies such as Glue (Dos Santos, 2006), El
último verano de la Boyita (Solomonoff, 2009), Miss Tacuarembó (Sastre, 2010), El niño
pez (Puenzo), or Ausente (Berger, 2011), due to reasons of detail required by close
reading, I will concentrate my analysis on one paradigmatic film, namely XXY (Puenzo,
2007). For this purpose, I will base my analysis on the Foucauldian-inspired perspective
on spatial heterotopias that is currently prominent in Film Studies, as well as on
Sedgwick’s topologies, the irreducibly spatiality of her ‘logics of the beside’ and her way
of conceiving spaces across genders and sexualities. Furthermore, I will also consider the
linguistic conception of heterotopia –the queerly heterotopic as undermining language
from within– through some detailed analysis of the use of dialogue in the film.
The analysis will thus focus on early experiences of the ‘queer child/teenage self’ as
shameful (Sedgwick) or injured (Butler) but able to bring about child or teenage
performativity through an analysis of the key role that (symbolic and linguistic) space
plays in queer performativity. In this regard, I will explore the strong link between
heterotopias and closet space, and how both can be related to (queer) utopian spaces
through queer processes of subjectivation. Overall, my reading connects
childhood/adolescent queerness to space, and more specifically to heterotopian space as a
condition that allows for the emergence, exploration and development of queer
adolescent subjectivation, a process involving imagination, creativity and agency.
Olson, Scott (University of Iowa) scott-a-olson@uiowa.edu
Getting Off: Clinical Language, Voice, and Counterpublics in a 1993 Leather Bar
Police Raid
This paper assesses the strategic mobilization of voice in courtroom proceedings
following the 1993 police raid of a popular Chicago leather bar. The proceedings involve
the arrest of a bar patron for public indecency by an undercover police officer who
observed the patron engaging in erotic acts with a group of other men in the bar’s
backroom. Importantly, in a disavowal of moralism and homophobia, the prosecutor does
not explicitly contest the decency or indecency of the acts in question, but rather argues
that the space is public and therefore subject to the statute under which the bar patron was
arrested. Through the course of the prosecutor’s examination, however, explicit narrative
of the defendant’s erotic practices emerged in excess of the stated goal of proving that the
backroom is a public space. That is, even though the prosecutor disavows the relevance
of the defendant’s acts to her argument, those acts and the sexual scene in which they are
situated nevertheless appear at the center of both the prosecutor’s questions as well as the
police officer’s narrative. Analysis of the lexical and discursive elements of the excess in
the prosecutor’s examination and the arresting officer’s testimony reveals how the
publicly erotic scene of a leather bar backroom came to appear at the center of the
moralizing and discursively normative space of the courtroom. Using theories of voice
from linguistic anthropology, Judith Butler’s concept of linguistic performativity, as well
as queer formulations of normativity and publics (Butler 1997, Berlant and Warner 1998,
Keane 1999), I argue that the prosecution and the arresting officer strategically and
conspicuously use clinical language to discursively remove the police officer from the
backroom scene and voyeuristically name the defendant as part of a marginalized
counterpublic. The analysis thus addresses the means through which homophobia
discursively circulates in the courtroom, as well as how it is also masked by and covertly
deployed in legal discourses of justice and vice.
Peterson, David J. (University of Nebraska at Omaha) davidpeterso1@unomaha.edu
The Grammar of Homophobic Space-Times: A Systemic-Functional Linguistic
Approach
My presentation explores the grammatical resources people draw on to configure
homophobic space-times. To do so, I draw on a corpus of various texts related to the
2005-2006 release of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short
story (first published in 1999), an event that incited wide-ranging media activities across
local, national, regional, and international terrains. A case study, I demonstrate how
politically conservative responses to the film—both local (the rural US West) and
national (largely commentary from the US political right/conservative Christians)—rely
on a number of textual (thematic organization), interpersonal (mood), and
representational (transitivity) resources to homophobically configure 1) Western space as
always already entailing heteronormative masculinity in contrast to metropolitan space;
and 2) rural Western time as constituted by a conflation of a valorized past (mythic) with
the present, which in turn serves to fend off a threatening future. Moreover, the
ideological functions of such configurations differ across spatiotemporalities. Generally
speaking, my findings indicate that local homophobic space-time constructions—seek to
delink and delimit the local from national and global space-times in order to resist
perceived metropolitan exploitation. US national homophobic space-time constructions,
by contrast, frequently seek to link western local space-times to the national space-time in
order to legitimate political conservatives’ governance agendas.
Phillips, Robert (Ball State University) rfphillips@bsu.edu
Gay Jews, Religious Society, and the Language of “Othering” in Israeli Media
This paper is part of a larger project that examines the effects of new media on changing
beliefs and identities of newly religious Orthodox gay Jewish men in Israel and the
United States. Specifically, the project is interested in how these men resolve the
dissonance between their sexual identity and their religious beliefs.
It takes as its starting point the 2015 Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance. The
march has been held annually since 2002, despite a stabbing attack in 2005 and protests
from Orthodox and Charedi groups in 2006. During the 2015 march, a stabbing attack by
an Orthodox Jewish man killed one and injured five participants. In the media reports that
followed the stabbings, Israeli and international LGBT rights groups and Orthodox
organizations blamed each other for the attack. Drawing upon ethnographic experience at
the 2015 march as well as both traditional and new media reports of the stabbing, this
paper examines the discursive construction of the “other” that was created through the
media. Two terms in particular are examined – “ultra-Orthodox,” a term deployed as a
derogatory slur towards rigorously observant Orthodox communities and “toeiva,” the
Hebrew for “abomination,” often used by observant Jews when speaking of homosexuals.
Pierce, Joseph (SUNY Stony Brook) joseph.m.pierce@gmail.com
From La bella Otero to Hija de Perra: A Century of Latin American Queer Selfnarratives
At present, one of the major components of global queer activism is the
depathologization of the corporeal configurations that gender nonconforming bodies
inhabit, undue, and reshape. In the case of Latin America, activists and artists/performers
such as Claudia Rodríguez, Hija de Perra, and Susy Shock have produced a mass of new
work invested in uncoupling gender categorizations from biological determinist views of
human anatomy, dismantling restrictive medical classifications, and proposing an
epistemic project of queer knowing and being. But this effort is not entirely new. In fact,
some of the earliest archival examples of what today might be called queer self-narrative
articulated nuanced and intellectually sophisticated understandings of the body, socially
constructed gender, and political agency. In this sense, a figure such as La bella Otero in
turn of the century Argentina foreshadows contemporary manifestations of trans*
identification by parodying the very discourses of self, body, and culture with which she
was ‘diagnosed’ as “un caso de inversión sexual adquirida”. Separated by a century, the
elegant, sharp witted, and matronly Otero finds a counterpoint in the trash/punk
exuberance of Hija de Perra, two figures whose performance of queer life speak to the
enduring legacy of corporeal challenges to the norm and the diversity of esthetic registers
employed in resistance of normative categories of self. This paper will trace literary and
(pseudo)scientific proposals of unstable bodies, focusing on use of parody to open new
ways of imagining the self, from the late 19th century to today in an effort to link the
history of queer identifications with the ongoing efforts to promote diverse
understandings of the human.
Prade, Fleur (Central Oregon Community College) fprade@cocc.edu
No Longer “le Deuxième Sexe”: The Rise of Women in Positions of Power, a Problem
of Linguistic Identity for French?
In Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare asks, “What’s in a name ?” As an act of power,
naming creates reality, indicating status in society and as a result defining a group. As
such, women have been sensitive to gender differences in naming practices and in forms
of address, both of which have been used as indicators of women’s inferior status to men
in society. Despite a 1982 law making sexual discrimination illegal, women in France
still did not have the political right to be titled accurately.
In order to prove that they are deserve to be seen as equal to men in the work force, do
women in francophone countries really have to adopt the “default” masculine titles? If
language has the power to change society’s view on women and their role in society, then
whose responsibility is it to impose linguistic changes, especially in a language that has
traditionally considered the “masculine” form as also being “neutral”? Is it up to each
individual country to find a way to erase the gap between linguistic practice and sexual
identity?
La France est d’ailleurs le seul et le dernier pays au monde qui continue de parler
de “Droits de l’Homme” et non pas de “Droits Humains”, comme touts les pays
qui ont ratifié la Déclaration universelle des Nations Unies de 1948. […] Les
Québécois francophones ont traduit “Human Rights” par “Droits de la personne”.
Bombardier et Laborde [2011:45]
In this paper I will first look at French society’s continuous resistance to gender-based
language reform despite the multiple interventions of its government at the federal level,
most recently in 2012 with the government’s official decree to remove the term
“Mademoiselle” from administrative forms and registries. Is government action enough
for a term to fall out of popular use and to mend the relationship between linguistic
practice and sexual identity? Why are other francophone countries such as Canada and
Belgium able to create feminine equivalent titles more easily than in France? Can a
machismo society such as France, truly change by just modifying its language?
Provencher, Denis (University of Maryland Baltimore County) provench@umbc.edu
“I kept the veil because it’s a hot accessory”: Flexible Language and Transculturalism
in the Queer Maghrebi French Diaspora
In this paper, I present a brief overview of the scholarship on queer language in the
diaspora (Manalansan; Decena; Provencher) as well as the concomitant claims to
citizenship and filiation (Fassin; Provencher). Next, I conduct an analysis of ethnographic
interviews from my fieldwork with 2Fik, French citizen of Maghrebi (North African) and
his performance art. Drawing on work in queer linguistics (Lewin and Leap; Leap and
Motschenbacher) and the concept of “flexible” language (Leap), we see that queer
Maghrebi and queer Maghrebi French speakers like 2Fik stake claims to belonging within
their families of origin, their local communities, and the larger terrain (French society;
Europe; Francophone global cities; the Maghrebi homeland). At the same time, the
language of “sexual citizenship” in France and the language of “queer diasporic
citizenship” differ in terms of their varying reliance on French discourses on
immigration, Islam, and belonging within a secular European country that touts sexual
democracy (Fassin) on the one hand, and Maghrebi discourses on tradition, honor, the
veil, and the harem on the other.
Redmond, Ryan (University of California-Davis) rcredmond@ucdavis.edu
Sexually Queer, Socially Straight: Analyzing the Enregisterment of Masculinity in
Japanese Popular Texts
‘Boys' love’ (i.e. yaoi) is a Japanese literary genre focused on the creation and
retention of systematic homosexual relationships between two archetypal personae, a
receptive partner: the uke and an aggressor partner: the seme. However, despite the
characters’ frequent engagement in gay sexual activities, Japanese critics and fans alike
have widely agreed that the characters portrayed in this genre are not really gay men, or
even men; they are just agencies for ideal romance in some imaginary communal space.
To research these claims from a linguistic perspective, both cross-sectional and
longitudinal studies concerning morphosyntactically-marked ‘gendered language’ usage
in yaoi were undertaken, however only the results from the former will be explained in
the present paper. In this study, dialogue from 75 single-chapter stories were entered into
a corpus and coded alongside each character’s role in the given relationship, their age,
social status in relation to each other, and other extenuating features. Next, a quantitative
analysis was conducted of the frequency of use of certain features, including first- and
second-person pronoun usage, sentence final expressions, and vowel quality shift in
adjectives. Results displayed little inter-author variability in gendered language
assignment among uke and seme characters. However, second-person pronoun choice
varied highly between the two roles, mirroring previous research on Japanese heteroromantic fiction. 'Masculine' sentence-final particle choice and frequency were also
variant between the two roles. However, the characters’ language also differed from
previous research on fictional heterosexual couples, in that there was no ‘feminine’
language presented. This result refutes previous claims that the characters in this genre
behave in an androgynous or 'non-masculine' manner, at least from a linguistic
standpoint. The present paper also discusses the results as they relate to issues delaying
the queer movement in Japan (e.g. the conflation of gender, sex, and sexuality), as well as
possible methodological issues present in analyzing discourse from Agha’s
‘enregisterment’ framework, and the feasibility of employing the present methodology on
non-Japanese language discourse.
Russell, Eric (University of California, Davis) erussell@ucdavis.edu
Non siamo omofobi – omosessuali non ci sono ! Destructing Gay, Constructing
Nature: The Language of le Sentinelle in Piedi
The Sentinelle in Piedi have become one of the more visible – and controversial –
populist groups opposing changes to Italian social institutions, emerging as a powerful
force following governmental proposals to legalize civil unions (disegno di legge [ddl]
Cirinnà), prohibit acts of homophobia in public domains, and proposing pedagogy
addressing gender and sexual identity in educational curricula (ddl Scalfarotto). At first
blush, the Sentinelle appear conservative, but not anti-gay: they occupy piazze [public
squares emblematic of Italian civic engagement], quietly reading as a means of protest to
perceived limitations on personal freedom and unwanted sociocultural evolutions.
However, even upon cursory examination of their official communications, few would
deny that the group is resolutely anti-gay and anti-modern: while it is difficult to “see”
their homophobia, it is not difficult to “hear” the group’s antipathy to LGBT individuals
and to their inclusion in marriage, parenting, and other civic institutions.
This paper proposes a structural examination of a social media corpus of +25,000 words
from the group’s website (www.sentinelleinpiedi.it). The primary objective is to describe
language behavior, understood as the product of choices that are linguistically and
sociolinguistically constrained. Analysis focuses on the mechanisms, which activate and
manipulate discourses that simultaneously destructure homosexuality as a human
characteristic and constructure a naturalist “truth” predicated on an oppositional, male-
female essentialism. In this, the Sentinelle explicitly deny their homo-, trans- and genderphobias and, through the use of particular lexical, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic
structures, position themselves as arbiters of Truth, Humanity, and Nature, whereas their
opponents are cast as uncivil, unnatural, and defective. Also attended to are intersections
between this and contemporary European populisms, specifically among traditionally
Mediterraneo-Catholic speech communities.
Sadzinski, Sylvia (Johannes Kepler University (Austria)) s.sadzinski@gmail.com
Post Porn: Queering Bodies, Sexualities and Spaces?
Post-porn is more than pornography: The term post-porn describes an interdisciplinary,
activist and subcultural practice and artistic strategy that does not primarily focus on
sexual enjoyment but criticises socio-cultural orders and normative and hierarchical
forms of identity. Post-porn wants to tell us: we do not need normative bodies for
pleasurable sex. It is therefore a pornography that wants to broaden common ideas and
concepts of mainstream pornography. It wants to be political as well as subversive and
has a strong theoretical initial point. Post-porn embraces performance art but also texts,
movies, and many more and is predominantly accessible thanks to different forms of new
media. Also the body always plays an essential role within all forms of postpornography. In my paper I will analyse how post- porn becomes a tool for the
subversion of prevailing orders; how post-pornographic representations become
metaphors of queering identities. Within my work I will consider queer as a notion
intervening in dichotomies, questioning power structures and indicating marginalized
and non-normative positions, behaviours and populations. It is as well a concept that can
bring social orders into question and destabilize power structures (El-Tayeb 2001, Engel
2002, Halberstam 2005, Haschemi Yekani/Michaelis 2005). How do artists and activists
like for example the Spanish María Llopis use post-porn in order to produce queer
situations of an in-between that challenge powerful intersectional and interdependent
discourses and categorisations? How is post-porn creating new meanings of the body,
sexualities, spaces, media and pornography itself?
Saleem, Saiful (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
ssaleem@gradcenter.cuny.edu
The Front National’s “Islam”: A Study of the Discursive Construction of
“Islamicized” Homophobia and Misogyny in France
Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (2015) is a curious progression in the genealogy of
anti-Muslim sentiment in France. The book, which is in some ways the novelization of
the kind of discourse found in Eric Zemmour's Mélancholie française (2010) or his more
recent Le suicide française (2014), marks the entry of extreme-right tropes into
mainstream contemporary French literature. More so, it represents a new peak in the
banalization and legitimization of Islamophobic discourse in France. Interestingly,
Soumission also reproduces a conception of “Islam” as contagion, benevolent or
otherwise, which dramatically changes French society. The novel does not allow the
narrator to voice an overt criticism of “Islam”, but the way the relation between the
Fraternité musulmane and French society is presented to the reader serves as implicit
criticism, thus forming a sub-text that connects to an extreme-right meta-text. In
connecting to this extreme-right meta-text, Houellebecq’s novel also constructs “Islam”
as being inherently misogynistic and intolerant. This is, however, not a new phenomenon.
Eleonore Pourriat’s short film La majorité opprimée (2010), despite its laudable
intentions of showing the oppressiveness of everyday sexism by reversing the genders of
the oppressors and oppressed, clearly depicts Muslims as sexually oppressive. Similarly,
the Front National (FN) has been effectuating a change in their official discourse since
the ascension of Marine Le Pen and the corresponding descent of her father and FN
founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. The FN now positions “Islam” as a monolithic construct that
not only threatens the white Christian demographics of France – as in Renaud Camus’ Le
Grand Remplacement (2011) –, but also one that threatens the place of women and sexual
minorities. This paper aims to study how the FN has gone from the overtly homophobic
days of Jean-Marie Le Pen to currently having a gay vice-president, while advancing the
image of an “Islam” that would be homophobic and misogynistic in order to incite fear in
the gay community and to entice them to vote for the FN against a menacing, but
constructed and generalized other. Indeed, a recent poll conducted by the Institut français
d'opinion publique shows that a larger percentage of the gay and bisexual population than
the straight population support the FN. Finally, this paper will demonstrate that this
constructed image of “Islam”, as indicated by popular representations in newspapers,
magazines and books, is well on its way to be taken as truth, in the Nietzschean sense of
the term.
Smith, K. Aaron (Illinois State University) kasmit3@ilstu.edu
Course Development in Gay Men’s English: Traditions and Additions
In this paper, I present on the development of a course in Gay Men’s English,
originally taught in 2008 as a topics course. The design of the course attempted to situate
Gay Men’s English in interdisciplinary academic discourses within an English
Department at a state university in the Midwest, one of the goals of which is “to articulate
and revise a multi-dimensional understanding of English Studies that responds to the
changing needs of our students, the field, and the world”. Thus, the course presented
here covered linguistic/cultural studies in Gay Men’s English (Leap 1996, Leap and
Boelstorff 2004), and then continued the examination of some of the features of Gay
Men’s English in the area of rhetoric through readings from essays by David Sedaris and
David Rakoff in order to observe and discuss how those authors engaged their broader
audiences in Gay Men’s English to some extent. Finally and keeping the spirit of English
Studies, the course ended with literary readings from E.M. Forster, Allan Hollingshurst
and Jamie O’Neill in order to track a tradition of literary representation of Gay Men’s
English and to observe some of the developments of that representation.
While the design and the delivery of the course reveals a number of interesting
ways in which to study Gay Men’s English across different fields of language inquiry, the
course has also provided a model for the development of new coursework on Gay Men’s
English by some of our Department’s graduate students, who update and expand the
original intellectual and pedagogical sources of the course in important ways. This last
point is then taken up and expanded upon in the paper by David Giovagnoli, a graduate
student in our Department’s English Studies doctoral program, given in the same session
following this paper.
VanderStouwe, Chris (Boise State University)
“Not gay, SSA.”: Challenging and Constructing Ideological Constraints on Agency in
New Sexual Identity Constructions
Despite a robust literature on agency in linguistic anthropology (e.g. Ahearn 2001, 1999;
Duranti 2004) and language, gender, and sexuality research (e.g. Davies 1991; Zimman
2010, 2014; Mills and Jones 2014), work that examines agency and its limits often solely
feature discussions about what agency entails, where it is located, and what limitations
may exist on it in varying social contexts. Constraints on agency as seen through multiple
layers of identity, conflict, or construct are less clearly or directly discussed. Researchers
in other fields have begun considering an idea of ‘constrained agency’ (e.g. Coe and
Jordhus-Lier 2010; Beste 2007), and though recent discussions of constrained agency
have emerged in scholarship in language, gender, and sexuality (e.g. VanderStouwe
2015, Warner-Garcia 2015), much more stands to be done to better theorize ways that
agency is constructed and constrained in multiply complicated ways. This paper aims to
continue to develop a working definition of constrained agency through linguistic
contexts by investigating data from a larger dissertation project investigating issues of
sexual identity, desire, and practice among men interested in men to explore constraints
on agency afforded to men who self-identify as straight despite acknowledging attraction
toward other men.
This paper focuses on footage from and media and popular responses to a 2015
special from The Learning Channel (TLC) called “My Husband’s Not Gay,” which
documented the lives of four Mormon men and their families in Salt Lake City, Utah,
who have acknowledged what they call SSA, or same-sex attraction. This label is seen to
be emerging as an identification and identity categorization that is often set apart from
either heterosexuality or gay identities through highly agentive linguistic means including
an insistent mantra that they are “Not gay, SSA” and mentioning being a part of the “SSA
community.” However, media portrayals and comment threads about the show and these
men’s self-presentations consistently reject the validity of creating a new identity
category, often insisting that these men must be gay or bisexual due to ideological links
between attractions and expected sexual actions, going so far as to suggest, for example,
that “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, he’s gay.” Social and ideologically
imposed constraints on these men’s agency is challenged through language in their self
onstruction of a unique identity categorization of “being” SSA. Despite this agentive
challenge, however, the men also constrain their own sexual agency of their attraction
toward other men through this same agentive act, adding levels of complication to both
agency, identity, and sexual desire. In other words, while these men seek to lead
traditional, heteronormative, married lives, they create for themselves what can be read as
a queered understanding of sexuality, in which their construction of an identity that is an
“alternative to an alternative” which lies outside our dominant understandings of
sexuality and established identity labels.
Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador (American University) vidalort@american.edu and Juliana
Martínez American University) jmartinez@american.edu
Sarmiento’s make-over: How the Bachillerato Popular Trans Mocha Celis is
transforming Argentinian education
“El Bachi” is not your typical Argentinean high school. Every day, students are greeted
by a huge banner with the image of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento—founding father of the
Argentinean nation and the man credited for making education mandatory, secular and
free. However, this Sarmiento is in full make up, has blond hair, and carefully plucked
eyebrows. This image effectively encapsulates the ethos of the Bachillerato Popular
Trans Mocha Celis: to bring forth the hidden curricula around issues of gender, sex, and
sexuality that permeate the educational system and shape notions of citizenry and
national belonging, etc. The high school was born at the intersection of two major shifts
in Argentinean recent history: the development of “popular schools” after the economic
crash of 2001; and the passing of the “gender identity law” in 2012. We propose that
Mocha Celis rearranges the politics of managing bodies until recently unintelligible to the
State, by both demanding that the policies address their needs while coopting (some
would say queering) the basic tenets of universality of Argentinian identity (thus
appealing to, and breaking from, nationalist discourses). In this paper, we are being
critical of how the left is using that double entendre in their workings of the high school.
We show how the Bachillerato “queers” a national imaginary as it re-appropriates it.
Using popular media, fieldwork conducted between 2014-2016, and interviews with key
stakeholders, we propose a better understanding of Mocha Celis as a radical institution
that also maneuvers conservative understandings of access to education, of the validation
of difference, even of belonging to a problematic construct of nation.
Viteri, Maria Amelia (Universidad San Francisco de Quito) mviteri@usfq.edu.ec
Colonial Formations and Contemporary Heteronormativity
This paper addresses the normalization of the “feminine” in contemporary governmental
discourses in Ecuador in light of global narratives and debates such as Vanity Fair Cover
Caitlyn Jenner and Lawrence Cox, first transgender to appear in the cover of Time
Magazine. These bodies highlight once again the “born in the wrong body” discourse
that wipes out challenges to Western-18th Century notions of two sexes, endorsing once
again a “biology versus culture debate.”