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.”