Feminism: Sexuality

At the end of 2017, Kristen Roupenian’s short story, Cat Person, went viral. Published at the height of the #MeToo movement, it depicted a ‘toxic date’ and a disturbing sexual encounter between Margot, a college student, and Robert, an older man she meets at work. The story was widely viewed as a relatable denunciation of women’s powerlessness and routine victimization. In this paper, I push against this common reading. I propose an alternative feminist interpretation through the lens of Simone de (...) Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism: a form of alienation that consists in making oneself both the subject and the ultimate project of one’s life. Framing Margot as a narcissist casts her as engaging, not in subtly coerced, undesired sex, but rather in sex that is desired in a tragically alienated way. I argue that Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism is an important tool for feminists today – well beyond the interpretation of Cat Person. It presses us to see systematic subordination not just as something done to women, but also as something women do to themselves. This in turn highlights the neglected role of self-transformation as a key aspect of feminist political resistance. (shrink)

I argue that “consent” language presupposes that the contemplated action is or would be at someone else’s behest. When one does something for another reason—for example, when one elects independently to do something, or when one accepts an invitation to do something—it is linguistically inappropriate to describe the actor as “consenting” to it; but it is also inappropriate to describe them as “not consenting” to it. A consequence of this idea is that “consent” is poorly suited to play its canonical (...) central role in contemporary sexual ethics. But this does not mean that nonconsensual sex can be morally permissible. Consent language, I’ll suggest, carries the conventional presupposition that that which is or might be consented to is at someone else’s behest. One implication will be a new kind of support for feminist critiques of consent theory in sexual ethics. (shrink)

Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy — found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion — and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even anti-sex, cisist, (...) sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them. (shrink)

How are patriarchal regimes perpetuated and reproduced? Kate Manne’s recent work on misogyny aims to provide an answer to this central question. According to her, misogyny is a property of social environments where women perceived as violating patriarchal norms are ‘kept down’ through hostile reactions coming from men, other women and social structures. In this paper, I argue that Manne’s approach is problematically incomplete. I do so by examining a recent puzzling social phenomenon which I call (post-)feminist backlash: the rise (...) of women-led movements reinstating patriarchal practices in the name of feminism. I focus on the example of ‘raunch feminist’ CAKE parties and argue that their pro-patriarchal dimension cannot be adequately explained by misogyny. I propose instead a different story that emphasizes the continued centrality of gender distinctions in our social normative life, even as gendered social meanings become increasingly contested. This triggers meaning vertigo, a distinct form of social anxiety and the reactionary impulse at the heart of (post)-feminist backlash. Meaning vertigo both complicates the answer to Manne’s main question—“why is misogyny still a thing?”—and suggests the need and opportunity for a different kind of feminist political intervention. (shrink)

يتمحور البحث حول نقد صادق جلال العظم للتابوهات، عمومًا، وللتابو الجنسي، خصوصًا، وينطلق البحث من التشديد على أهمية النقد في فكر العظم، على مستويي؛ التنظير له، وممارسته في معظم أو جل أعماله، ليحاول، بعد ذلك، إبراز تلك الممارسة النقدية في ميدان التابوهات عمومًا، وتابو الجنس خصوصًا، وانطلاقًا من ذلك؛ تتمثل الأسئلة الأساسية التي يحاول البحث الإجابة عنها، في الآتي: ما أهمية النقد عمومًا، ونقد التابوهات خصوصًا، في فكر العظم؟ ما العلاقة بين النقد والتحريم، من منظور العظم؟ وإلى أي حدٍّ، وبأي (...) معنىً سعى العظم إلى تجاوز (الخطوط الحمر) في نقده لثالوث التابوهات (الجنس والدين والسياسة)؟ ما الذي ينقده العظم، تحديدًا، في ميدان التابو الجنسي؟ وما هي الإشكاليات الأساسية التي يتضمنها ويثيرها هذا النقد؟ للإجابة عن هذه الأسئلة؛ ستتجسد مقاربتنا المنهجية لنصوص العظم، في ما يمكن تسميته ﺒـ "الهيرمينوطيقا النقدية"؛ فهي هيرمينوطيقا، أو تتّصف بالسمة الهيرمينوطيقية، ليس بسبب بعدها التأويلي الصريح، أو اعتمادها على التأويل فحسب، (فبهذا المعنى، كل مقاربةٍ أو دراسةٍ هي هيرمينوطيقيةٌ، لأنها تأويليةٌ بالضرورة)؛ وإنما بسبب افتراضها، أيضًا، أن هذه النصوص تتضمن دلالاتٍ متكاملةً، تجسِّد كليةً متسقةً أو متناسقة العناصر، يمكن الإمساك بها، انطلاقًا من "المقاصد المعلنة" للكاتب، وعلى هذا الأساس، سنحاول، في عرضنا ومناقشتنا لنقد التابو (الجنسي) عند العظم، أن نستند، بالدرجة الأولى، إلى تنظير العظم نفسه حول هذه المسألة؛ أي إلى أقواله المحدَّدة وآرائه الصريحة في هذا الخصوص، قبل أن نضع هذه الرؤية النظرية في مواجهةٍ ثنائيةٍ: مع ذاتها من جهةٍ، (ضمن إطار ما يمكن تسميته بالنقد المحايث)، ومع انتقادات بعض المفكرين الذين دخلوا في حوارٍ أو سجالٍ معه، ومع رؤيتنا للواقع أو الفكر الذي يحاول العظم دراسته، (في إطار ما يمكن تسميته بالنقد الخارجي)، من جهةٍ أخرى. وهذه المواجهة النقدية المزدوجة مع ما هو محايث لفكر العظم، ومفارقٌ له، هي التي تمثِّل أساس البعد النقديِّ في دراستنا لهذا الفكر. (shrink)

In this existential reading of Kim Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie of 2016, I focus on the rise of selfie culture and public discourse around emerging digital representations of women's bodies. The selfie is a relatively new phenomenon, and is particularly curious because of the subject/object paradox it creates; in taking a selfie, a person asserts control over their own image, but at the same time, becomes object in their own gaze. My argument is that selfies, like other assertions of (...) bodily subjectivity in digital spaces, are a threat to patriarchal structures that paint women as immanent, object, as reflected in public discourse around Kardashian-West's International Women's Day selfie. I draw on both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's work on subjectivity in existentialism and phenomenology, as well as Amy Shields Dobson's work on post-feminism and young women's projections of self, in order to delineate what it is about the selfie that creates this paradox. I also make reference to the work of Elisabeth Grosz and Frantz Fanon in relation to a colonial hierarchy that prioritises body over mind, as well as Laura Mulvey's work on the male gaze. (shrink)

Iniaalok ng pag-aaral na ito ang isang panunuring Foucauldian sa pangkasariang karanasan ng babaeng may breast cancer (BRCA). Inihahain din ng mga may-akda ang mga sumusunod na tanong: Paano naaapi ang babaeng may BRCA? Paano hinahamon ng kanyang karanasan ang konsepto ng seksuwalidad? Maaari bang ituring ang kanyang karanasan bilang anyo ng pagbalikwas? Tutugunan ng mga may-akda ang naturang mga tanong gamit ang kapangyarihan-diskurso-seksuwalidad ni Foucault habang ipinapalagay na: (1) matagumpay na naipapakita ng talaangkanan ng seksuwalidad ni Foucault kung paanong (...) ang seksuwalidad, bilang isang diskursibong kontrak, ay ginagamit bilang isang teknik ng pangongontrol, at (2) nabibigyan tayo ni Foucault ng isang paraan ng pag-unawa sa kung papaano tumutugon ang indibidwal sa iba’t ibang sistema ng kontrol, maging ng isang balangkas na makapagpapaliwanag sa maraming relasyong pangkapangyarihan na siyang tumutukoy sa moda ng pag-iral ng indibidwal. Nahahati ang papel na ito sa tatlong pangunahing bahagi: (1) Ang Panunuring Feminista ng Sabjek na Foucauldian, (2) Ang Pangkasariang Karanasan ng Babaeng may BRCA, at (3) Pagbalikwas bilang Diskurso-Konstrak at Binuong Tugon. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosophers, medieval theologians, Enlightenment thinkers, and contemporary humanists alike have debated all aspects of human sexuality, including its purpose, permissibility, normalcy, and risks. _Philosophizing About Sex_ provides a philosophical guide to those longstanding and important debates. Each chapter takes a general issue and shows how ongoing public discussions of sexuality can be illuminated by careful philosophical investigation. Debates over topics such as sexual assault, sexual orientation, sex education, prostitution, and “sexting” involve larger questions about morality, law, science, and (...) politics and cannot be intelligently discussed in isolation from broader issues. By asking deceptively simple questions, this book shows how difficult but important it is to arrive at satisfying answers. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to the critiques of my book, The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, made by Nikolas Kompridis, Paul Patton, Allison Weir and Moira Gatens. My response is organized around three overlapping themes that are raised in these four astute papers: a defence of my account of normativity, of my reading of Foucault’s conception of power, and of my analysis of gender subordination/identity.

In this article I will revisit the question of what I term the continuum of heteronormative sexual interactions, that is, the idea that purportedly ethically acceptable heterosexual interactions are conceptually, ethically, and politically associated with instances of sexual violence. Spurred by recent work by psychologist Nicola , I conclude that some of my earlier critiques of Catharine MacKinnon's theoretical linkages between sexual violence and normative heterosex are wanting. In addition, neither MacKinnon's theory nor my critique of it seem up to (...) the task of providing an ethical account of the examples of “unjust sex” that Gavey has described. I come to the conclusion that an ethical analysis of sexual interactions requires a focus on sexual desire, but that desire cannot take on the by now heavily criticized role of consent. Rather than looking for the presence or absence of sexual desire prior to sexual encounters as a kind of ethical certification of them, we ought instead to focus on the efficacy of that sexual desire, that is, its ability (or lack thereof) to shape an encounter in substantial and meaningful ways. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between disability and “queerness.” I argue that the hostility frequently expressed against both disabled and queer individuals is a function of fear of the undecidability of the body. I draw on feminist, queer, and disability theory to help us understand this phenomenon and suggest that these different kinds of theories have a complementary relationship. That is, feminist and queer theory help us see how this fear works, disability theory helps us see why it exists.

Lynne Huffer’s ambitious inquiry redresses the rift between feminist and queer theory, traversing the space of a new, post-moral sexual ethics that includes pleasure, desire, connection, and betrayal.

Gender, race, and sexuality are not just identities; they are also systems of social organization – i.e., systems of privilege and oppression. This article addresses two main ways privilege and oppression are relevant topics in and for philosophical aesthetics: the role of the aesthetic in privilege and oppression, and the role of philosophical aesthetics, as a discipline and a body of texts, in constructing and naturalizing relations of privilege and oppression . The first part addresses how systems of privilege and (...) oppression use the aesthetic. I will discuss various ways race, gender, and sexuality, as both embodied identities and broader social institutions, work with and through “the aesthetic”. The second part addresses racism and sexism in the discipline of aesthetics. Both in its history and its present practice aesthetics’apparent neutrality on questions of privilege and oppression is actually evidence of its investment in systems of privilege and oppression. (shrink)

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. (...) This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world. (shrink)

In the Nordic countries, at a time when women have only recently won the right to their own bodies and to a sexuality of their own and for themselves, women nevertheless fake orgasms. Moreover, a .

Bridging the gap between feminist studies of motherhood and queer theory, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood articulates a provocative philosophy of queer kinship that need not be rooted in lesbian or gay sexual identities. Working from an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates feminist philosophy and queer, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, Shelley M. Park offers a powerful critique of an ideology she terms monomaternalism. Despite widespread cultural insistence that every child should have one—and only one—“real” mother, many contemporary family constellations do not (...) fit this mandate. Park highlights the negative consequences of this ideology and demonstrates how families created through open adoption, same-sex parenting, divorce, and plural marriage can be sites of resistance. Drawing from personal experiences as both an adoptive and a biological mother and juxtaposing these autobiographical reflections with critical readings of cultural texts representing multi-mother families, Park advocates a new understanding of postmodern families as potentially queer coalitional assemblages held together by a mixture of affection and critical reflection premised on difference. (shrink)

Occupying an eccentric position with respect to critical theories, Foucault prefigures a queer critical thought and practice. In this paper I make a case for the continuing importance of Foucault for rethinking feminism within the context of neoliberal governmentality despite continuing skepticism about the value of his ethical writings. I draw not only upon the work of Foucault, but also that of queer feminist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

In this article, I question the actuality of Freud's ideas on sexuality. First, I investigate why Freud thinks that the main psychopathological syndromes are determined by problems related to sexuality. I then show in what sense Freud's theories on sexuality make it impossible to simply think of psychoanalysis as yet another developmental psychology. Then, I turn to Fonagy's recent claim that sexual emotions cannot be mirrored and that this is the reason why sexuality can only be an imposed burden. Or, (...) rather, this impossibility explains why sexuality belongs to the borderline spectrum. Fonagy further links this idea to Laplanche's theory of a generalized seduction that it is meant to explain. I argue that it is the other way around: the theory of a generalized seduction explains the lack of mirroring in the case of sexuality. In my conclusion, I state that although the metapsychological claims of both Fonagy and Laplanche allow us to reaffirm the special place sexuality has in understanding the human being, their theories fall short when it comes to defending an exclusive primacy of sexuality. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the emergence of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) within American psychiatry and beyond in the postwar period, setting out what I believe to be important and suggestive questions neglected in existing scholarship. Tracing the nomenclature within successive editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), I consider the reification of the term ‘FSD’, and the activism and scholarship that the rise of the category has occasioned. I suggest that analysis of FSD benefits from (...) scrutiny of a wider range of sources (especially since the popular and scientific cross-pollinate). I explore the multiplicity of FSD that emerges when one examines this wider range, but I also underscore a reinscribing of anxieties about psychogenic aetiologies. I then argue that what makes the FSD case additionally interesting, over and above other conditions with a contested status, is the historically complex relationship between psychiatry and feminism that is at work in contemporary debates. I suggest that existing literature on FSD has not yet posed some of the most important and salient questions at stake in writing about women’s sexual problems in this period, and can only do this when the relationship between ‘second-wave’ feminism, ‘post-feminism’, psychiatry and psychoanalysis becomes part of the terrain to be analysed, rather than the medium through which analysis is conducted. (shrink)

There is a need to develop libertarian responses to writings on race, gender, and sexual orientation. Offering such responses not only demonstrates to potential opponents of libertarian reform that libertarianism can seriously address these issues: libertarian responses can also help us confront forms of “private” oppression that are not per se un-libertarian, but which support state oppression. Drawing on thinkers such as Murray Rothbard, Roderick Long, Charles Johnson, Gene Sharp, Wendy McElroy, and bell hooks, this paper establishes historical links between (...) the intellectual traditions of feminism, nonviolent action, and libertarianism, and explores what a nonviolent, libertarian resistance to patriarchy might look like. By demonstrating the analogies between Sharp’s and Rothbard’s theories of political power and hooks’ theory of patriarchy, this paper shows that Sharp’s techniques for resistance to state tyranny can be adapted for use against patriarchal oppression. (shrink)

Recent rape law reform is most saliently characterised by a turn to gender neutrality in its definition of the crime of rape. The few possible advantages of a gender neutral approach to rape are offset by a series of disadvantages regarding gender justice when viewed from a feminist perspective. Formal gender neutrality does not safeguard against the effective influence of pervasive and enduring symbolic constructions pertaining to male and female sexuality and of a normalised hierarchical binary constructed between the two (...) sexes, in particular where sexual relations are concerned. Such efficacy may impede justice for both male and female victims of rape. The question about the place of sexual difference or rather sexual specificity within feminist theories of justice should be considered anew in light of this critical analysis of gender neutrality in rape law. (shrink)

The SlutWalk campaigns around the world have triggered a furious debate on whether they advance or limit feminist legal politics. This article examines the location of campaigns such as the SlutWalk marches in the context of feminist legal advocacy in postcolonial India, and discusses whether their emergence signifies the demise of feminism or its incarnation in a different guise. The author argues that the SlutWalks, much like the Pink Chaddi (panty) campaign in India, provide an important normative and discursive challenge (...) to a specific strand of feminism based on male domination and female subordination in the area of sexuality and also speaks to the emergence of consumer agency in the very heart of pleasure in the neo-liberal moment. It serves as a space clearing gesture, a form of feminism ‘lite’, rather than offering a transformative or revolutionary politics, and thus enables the possibility of feminist theoretical positions in a postcolonial context that have hitherto been marginalised or ignored in feminist legal advocacy in India to emerge. (shrink)

This article explores the significance of feminism in transnational activism around LGBTQ protest events, namely equality marches and associated festivals in Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw in Poland. The arguments advanced in this article are based on a multi-method qualitative research project focusing on transnational cooperation in the planning and realization of LGBTQ protest events in Poland, conducted in the years 2008–2009. The authors highlight the decisively coalitional nature of the activist networks around LGBTQ politics in some of the locations studied. (...) They argue that feminists are core actors in these ‘networked solidarities’ around the oppression and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people both in local and transnational contexts. Solidarity is a concept used by many research participants to account for their political actions and to rationalize intra- and intergroup dynamics shaped by complex webs of differences. The authors draw on postcolonial feminist discussions on the limits and potentialities of politics of solidarity as a ‘politics of location’ to account for tensions which some activists reported regarding their experience of ‘coalition work’. Some of these tensions related to gender politics and gender relations, always articulated in the conjunction of wider webs of power relations. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw the discourses around bestiality/zoophilia into the realm of queer theory in order to point to a new form of animal advocacy, something that might be called, in shorthand, loving animals. My argument is quite simple: if all interdicts against bestiality depend on a firm notion of exactly what sex is (and they do), and if queer theory disrupts that firm foundation by arguing that sexuality is impossible to define beforehand and pervades many different kinds of (...) relations (and it does), then viewing bestiality in the frame of queer theory can give us another way to conceptualize the limitations of human exceptionalism. By focusing on transformative connections between humans and animals, a new form of animal advocacy emerges through the revolutionary power of love. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 105-121, June 2012.

Pregnant women and persons engaging in homosexual practices compose two groups that have been and still are amongst those most severely subjected to coercive restrictions regarding their own bodies. From an historical point of view, it is a recent and rare phenomenon that a woman’s right to abortion and a person’s right to engage in homosexual interactions are recognized. Although most Western liberal states currently do recognize these rights, they are under continuous assault from various political and religious movements. Moreover, (...) though liberal theories of justice typically defend women’s rights to abortion and people’s rights to homosexual activity, these theories often struggle to capture the fundamental ground for these rights. For example, it appears hard for the liberal to say why and when only the woman and not the embryo/fetus has rights and why the right to certain sexual practices is not on par with rights to other preferences. Contemporary liberal theories of justice, therefore, have a hard time identifying what distinguishes questions of abortion and sexual activities from other questions of right and thereby also have difficulty capturing the gravity of the wrongdoing involved in coercively restricting homosexual interactions and abortion as such. I argue that Kant’s theory of justice succeeds on both counts, because it can locate the fundamental ground for these rights in an understanding of the bodily integrity of the person. Just states will neither permit nor outlaw all abortions or sexual interactions, but rather will require all such laws to be reconcilable with the protection of each person’s right to freedom. (shrink)

Through a careful reading of Foucault’s 1979 lectures on neoliberalism alongside Volumes 1 and 2 of The History of Sexuality, I argue that scholarship on both neoliberalism and queer theory should heed Foucault’s framing of both neoliberalism and sexuality as central to biopolitics. I thus offer two correctives to these fields of scholarship: for scholarship on neoliberalism, I locate a way to address the ethical bankruptcy of neoliberalism in a manner that Marxist analyses fail to provide; for scholarship in queer (...) theory, I warn that the longstanding embrace of non-conformity as a mode of resistance to normalization is suspiciously neoliberal. I conclude with the possibility of rehabilitating the concept of jouissance as a non-fungible limit to the enterprising rationality of neoliberalism that, if historicized and especially racialized, might offer a meaningful response to the increasing ethical collapse wrought by the neoliberalization of our lives. (shrink)

Feminist theory and reflections on sexuality and gender rarely make contact with contemporary continental philosophy of religion. Where they all come together, creative and transformative thinking occurs. In Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion, internationally recognized scholars tackle complicated questions provoked by the often stormy intersection of these powerful forces. The essays in this book break down barriers as they extend the richness of each philosophical tradition. They discuss topics such as queer sexuality and religion, feminism and the gift, (...) feminism and religious reform, and religion and diversity. The contributors are Hélène Cixous, Sarah Coakley, Kelly Brown Douglas, Mark D. Jordan, Catherine Keller, Saba Mahmood, and Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in (...) personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective. (shrink)

Nancy Chodorow, in her groundbreaking book _The Reproduction of Mothering_, quite simply changed the conversation in at least three areas of study: psychoanalysis, women's studies, and sociology. In her latest book, _Individualizing Gender and Sexuality_, she examines the complexity and uniqueness of each person's personal creation of sexuality and gender and the ways that these interrelate with other aspects of psychic and cultural life. She brings her well-known theoretical agility, wide-ranging interdisciplinarity, and clinical experience to every chapter, advocating for the (...) clinician's openness, curiosity, and theoretical pluralism. The book begins with reflections on Freud's _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_, followed by considerations of Melanie Klein and Stephen Mitchell, as well as on her own work and on the postmodern turn in psychoanalytic gender theory. Subsequent chapters address contemporary clinical-cultural issues such as women and work, women and motherhood, and men and violence. Concluding chapters elaborate on the multiple ingredients and the personal affective, conflictual, and defensive constellations and processes that create sexuality and gender in each individual. Ending with a chapter on homosexualities as compromise formations, Chodorow deepens her account of clinical individuality and sex-gender transference-countertransference while bringing her readers back to Freud and to the many strands that followed, as she consolidates a consistent line of interest in sexuality and gender, theory and practice, sustained over a lifetime. (shrink)

The recent Dutch homo-emancipation policy has identified religious communities, particularly within migrant populations, as a core target group in which to make homosexuality more ‘speakable’. In this article we examine the paradoxical silencing tendencies of this ‘speaking out’ policy on queer Muslim organisations in the Netherlands. We undertake this analysis as the Dutch government is perhaps unique in developing an explicit ‘homo-emancipation’ policy and is often looked to as the model for sexuality politics and legal redress in relation to inequalities (...) on the basis of sexual orientation. We highlight how the ‘speakability’ imperative in the Dutch homo-emancipation policy reproduces a paradigmatic, ‘homonormative’ model of an ‘out’ and ‘visible’ queer sexuality that has also come to be embedded in an anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Muslim discourse in the Netherlands. Drawing on the concept of habitus, particularly in the work of Gloria Wekker, we suggest that rather than relying on a ‘speakability’ policy model, queer Muslim sexualities need to be understood in a more nuanced and intersecting way that attends to their lived realities. (shrink)

The recent Dutch homo-emancipation policy has identified religious communities, particularly within migrant populations, as a core target group in which to make homosexuality more ‘speakable’. In this article we examine the paradoxical silencing tendencies of this ‘speaking out’ policy on queer Muslim organisations in the Netherlands. We undertake this analysis as the Dutch government is perhaps unique in developing an explicit ‘homo-emancipation’ policy and is often looked to as the model for sexuality politics and legal redress in relation to inequalities (...) on the basis of sexual orientation. We highlight how the ‘speakability’ imperative in the Dutch homo-emancipation policy reproduces a paradigmatic, ‘homonormative’ model of an ‘out’ and ‘visible’ queer sexuality that has also come to be embedded in an anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Muslim discourse in the Netherlands. Drawing on the concept of habitus, particularly in the work of Gloria Wekker, we suggest that rather than relying on a ‘speakability’ policy model, queer Muslim sexualities need to be understood in a more nuanced and intersecting way that attends to their lived realities. (shrink)

This article endeavours to open up a dialogue between succession law and the field of gender, sexuality and the law. It presents a detailed analysis of five cases concerning inheritance disputes relating to lesbians or gay men. The sexuality of the parties in the cases is ‘doctrinally irrelevant’ but the analysis demonstrates the significance of sexuality in the resolution of the legal disputes. In doing so it identifies how legal discourse remains a critical site for the production of societal norms (...) and in particular how lesbian and gay perspectives reveal the gendered assumptions underlying a number of key succession law doctrines. It emphasises the importance of taking difference seriously and the limits to formal legal equality. (shrink)

"Portions of this work were originally published as La racaille de la Republique by Fadela Amara and Mohammed Abdi, Editions du Seuil, 2006"--T.p. verso.