Browsing by Subject "Heteronormativity"
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Item A-AVOIR Resistance : a cross cultural study of sexual citizenship in North America and France(2012-05) Batiste, Dominique Pierre; Strong, Pauline Turner, 1953-; Speed, Shannon, 1964-; Johnson, MichaelWhat forms of resistance are gay men in France and North America enacting against heteronormativity and homophobia? And why are they enacting these particular forms of resistance? To answer these questions, this thesis aims to draw connections between gay men's resistance strategies and larger socio-political phenomena in both France and North American cultures. First I focus on the discursive construction of citizens, both heterosexual and homosexual, in order to illustrate how gay men are relegated to second-class citizenship based on their sexual identities and practices. My focus, here, is cultural citizenship and sexual citizenship, two themes that run throughout this thesis. Next, I use Foucault's theories of knowledge-power to reveal how power relations in society discursively create subject positions, such as 'homosexuals' and 'heterosexuals', utilizing structures of control, norms, rewards, and punishments in order to champion heterosexuality to the detriment of homosexuality. In order to contest exercises of power, gay men engage in acts of resistance. i examine scholarly debates centered on resistance, and create a list of criterion for overt resistance, which I dub A AVOIR Resistance on account that it includes the characteristics of Action, Alternatives, Visibility, Opposition, Intent, and Recognition. Utilizing my rubric for overt resistance, as well as Foucault's notions of power, I analyze interview transcripts from a sample of gay men in North America and France to reveal that some gay men, living outside of large metropolitan areas, are rejecting hegemonic ideals of 'gayness' and integrating into mainstream heteronormative society. These men are creating what I call 'authentic communities' where many individuals from various backgrounds and lifestyles live together harmoniously based primarily on access to resources rather than identity markers such as sexual identity. this research shows a split between the ways that urban and suburban gay men embody their homosexuality. Since research on gay men focuses on those living in urban areas, my research calls, instead, for focus on suburban gay men and their resistance to homo-normative ideologies of what it means to me gay.Item Resisting heteronormative neoliberal capitalism : motivations of a queer designer(2016-05) Cline, Jesse Andrew; Gorman, Carma; Park, Jiwon; Nault, CurranHistorically, the design profession in the US has been beholden to the capitalist free market; most projects are commissioned by clients, who are in turn motivated by capitalistic goals. In order to gain greater visibility and rights in the public sphere in the US, many LGBTQ+ people have chosen to follow a heteronormative social model, in particular by embracing the institution of gay marriage (rather than by making the more radical move of challenging the utility of the institution of marriage for queers and straights). Marketers have pounced on the opportunity to sell products to this new, socially unthreatening homonormative demographic, which, like heteronormative groups, has tended to express citizenship through consumerism. As a form of what Kalle Lasn calls culture-jamming, I have made a series of subversive artifacts and communication devices that resist hetero- and homonormativity and articulate a radical queer politics of design and anti-consumerist citizenship. My works are informed by radical queer theory and non-normative, queerly-inspired content, methodologies, and aesthetics; the sex toys, in particular, are polemical objects intended to challenge and disrupt the homonormative consumer culture fostered by the twenty-first century’s neoliberal economic environment.