Philosophy of Sexual Orientation

What happens to reading and writing when place, emotion, and materiality are just as important as the ability to write or to engage with a text? Grounded in the field of literacy studies, Reading, Writing, and Queer Survival examines the significance of inanimate and other posthuman elements to LGBTQ+ Appalachians, establishing queer storytelling as a transformative methodology for thinking about multifaceted Appalachian identities and spaces. Readers are asked to consider narrative and literacy as forces in the world-changing, flowing, emerging from (...) place, alive in their own way. While focusing on people and their experiences in the region, the book also illustrates the complex literacy practices that LGBTQ+ Appalachians take part in to make meaning and build connections. The resulting analysis challenges our understanding of agency, queerness, and human-centric definitions of literacy. By including the stories of queer Appalachians-both the interview participants' and his own-Caleb Pendygraft has written an essential theoretical framework. Reading, Writing, and Queer Survival is a call to imagine a new future in which literacy is animate and dynamic. (shrink)

Are gender and sexuality genetically determined, or do we construct and perform them? For too long, debates about gender and sexuality have swung between the idea that our identities are biologically fixed and the claim that they’re freely chosen or socially constructed. Philosopher of gender and sexuality Helga Varden offers a striking alternative. Drawing on Kant’s theory of human nature, she argues that gender and sexuality aren’t chosen or hardwired – they emerge from the inner texture of our conscious, embodied (...) experience of the world. (shrink)

Sexual orientation and how we might understand it is a topic that arouses significant controversy. Is sexual orientation a natural or social phenomenon? Are categories such as 'queer' and 'straight' essential to the human condition or dependent on contingent cultural practices? Whilst such questions have been considered from the perspectives of sociology and gender studies, they remain relatively underexplored from a philosophical standpoint. In this book, Matthew Andler breaks new ground examining the metaphysics of sexuality. Distinguishing sexual orientation and sexual (...) identity, he asks why only certain aspects of sexuality count as sexual orientations, arguing that sexual dispositions can only become sexual orientations in virtue of being related to heteropatriarchal kinship structures. He then turns to sexual identity, arguing that the categories 'queer' and 'straight' are grounded in the political function of sexuality cultures as resisting and/or entrenching heteropatriarchal kinship structures. Additionally, he critiques capitalist expropriations of queerness in pinkwashing. He also argues that trans-inclusive interpretations of sexuality categories serve everyone who seeks to build a life outside of the narrow provisions of heteropatriarchal kinship structures. Sexual Orientation and Identity: A Philosophical Analysis will be of interest to those studying the philosophy of gender, social metaphysics, and gender studies, as well as for anyone interested in the conceptual issues underlying debates concerning gender and social justice. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to develop an analysis of what we call “the closet” from a political perspective, not just an individual one. Much has been written about coming out: about how to do it, about the benefits for the person who comes out, about support, about the difficulties in doing so, etc. But very little has been written about how this device is constructed: what is it made of, how does it work, when does it appear, what (...) mechanisms, discourses and practices configure it, how does one “enter” it? What are its implications for the policies that regulate sexuality and gender, and the individual and collective effects on the people who live in it, or who come out of it? We will see that the closet can be understood in many ways, with diverse political dimensions: as a space, as a social relationship, as a system of oppression, as a political regime, as a temporality, as an epistemology, as a disciplinary device, as a gender technology, as a trauma, as a form of violence, as a violation of human rights, as a producer of identities, as a colonial concept, as a prosthesis, as a performative act, as a cybernetic form, as a corporality, as a utopia, as a coffin, as a metaphor, as an institution, as a duel, as an architecture, as a thermodynamic system. (shrink)

In China, neither reproduction and parenthood by lesbian couples nor their marital status are regulated or protected by law. In 2020, the first legal dispute in China involving a lesbian couple over custody of their joint baby was heard in court. This study examines the legal and ethical issues that lesbian couples confront when they decide to give birth to a child of their own. These challenges begin with regulatory restrictions on their lawful access to assisted reproductive technology and extend (...) to gaps in the legal establishment of parenthood. We found that the lack of access to legitimate reproductive assistance for lesbian couples in China has caused them to make efforts to circumvent laws and regulations to have a child. However, the legislative gaps later led to ethical dilemmas when resolving disputes over parenthood. This study discusses different accounts of establishing and determining natural parenthood in China and concludes by pointing out the urgent need for change in legislative and sociocultural attitudes toward both assisted reproductive technology and same‐sex relationships, mapping the way forward for lesbian couples to obtain better protection of procreation and parenthood before their marriage is culturally accepted and finally legalized. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo busca entrecruzar algunos hallazgos de tres investigaciones antropológicas en Uruguay de las que he formado parte: una abordó las negociaciones sexuales y las estrategias que las mujeres ponen en práctica para gestionar las diferencias que se dan en los encuentros heterosexuales; otra, las significaciones y vivencias de lo erótico en practicantes de amor libre y de BDSM; la tercera los modelos de sexualidad y amor que se vienen construyendo y reafirmando desde iglesias neopentecostales en base a discursos (...) antigénero. El propósito será construir un diálogo entre estas investigaciones para visualizar las distintas formas que adopta el erotismo en estos contextos, considerando las prácticas y discursos de diverses actores sociales. En particular, el interés estará puesto en identificar de qué forma el erotismo puede ser útil para cuestionar o reafirmar los modelos sexo-afectivos dominantes, caracterizados por el patriarcado, la heterosexualidad y la monogamia como sistemas, y el binarismo y la complementariedad sexo-genérica. Las voces de les distintes actores darán cuenta de cómo se encarnan, resisten, modifican, desmontan, reconstruyen o reafirman estos modelos sexo-afectivos a través de sus prácticas y discursos. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Beitrag beginnt mit dem Bericht eines männlichen Analysanden über heterosexuellen Geschlechtsverkehr, den er als zutiefst lustvoll und gleichzeitig verstörend erlebt. Bei der Analyse der berichteten Erfahrung entsteht ein zunächst verwirrendes Bild von Geschlechtlichkeit jenseits der Binaritäten des penetrierenden Mannes und der penetrierten Frau. Beim Versuch einer theoretischen Einordnung wird die habituelle männliche Verleugnung der passiven Position im Geschlechtsverkehr und die Betonung der aktiv penetrierenden Phallizität als Abwehrformation gegen übermäßige sexuelle Erregung verstanden. Unter Rückgriff auf Laplanches Theorie der Konstitution (...) der infantilen Sexualität als Übersetzung rätselhafter elterlicher Botschaften wird Sex als zentraler Schauplatz der Aufsprengung rigider Geschlechterstereotype und gleichzeitiger Reproduktion selbiger verstanden. Die Untersuchung will unter Einbeziehung psychoanalytischer, aber auch queertheoretischer Überlegungen einen Beitrag zum Verständnis männlicher Heterosexualität leisten, indem rigide Phallizität als eine mögliche Abwehrformation gegen eine »fluidere« und gleichzeitig verstörendere Sexualität verstanden wird. (shrink)

Style: A Queer Cosmology considers artists and critics whose work defines style as that which eludes paraphrase or social scientific categorization; rather, they show style to be the attributes that make us all more like ourselves and less like each other.

In the last few years, many countries have introduced (or are proposing to introduce) legislation on ‘conversion therapy’, prohibiting attempts to change or suppress sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This legislation covers ‘aversion therapy’, a form of torture that has already been criminalized in most progressive countries, and also ‘talk therapy’, involving things like counselling, psychoanalysis, and prayer. Focusing on this latter category of practices, I explain what is at stake in the fact that sexual orientation and gender identity have (...) been paired for the purposes of this legislation. I use a particular law reform institute’s approach to this legislation as a case study, and review their literature review in mind to discovering whether they provided sufficient empirical justification for including gender identity in their conversion therapy legislation. I conclude that they did not, and suggest that the pairing of sexual orientation and gender identity may be purely political. (shrink)

This article situates Mexican sexology, and how it engaged homosexuality and gender nonconformity, within more familiar nation-building projects in Mexico following the Revolution (1910–20). It argues that much like with understandings of race, Mexican sexologists, influenced by neo-Lamarckism and ‘Latin' eugenics, viewed sexuality as caused largely by social and environmental factors, rather than simply as a congenital characteristic. Such experts advocated for social solutions for what they saw as the ‘state of danger’ that homosexuality represented, targeting their interventions at youths, (...) who were seen as pliable, future citizens, rather than adults, who were largely seen as irredeemable and best isolated from the national body. The article explores discursive, ideological, and methodological threads in Mexican sexology from the 19th to the mid-20th century, the field’s professionalization and transnational connections, case studies of youths in which the preferred solutions involved promoting family stability and coherence, and adult cases ranging from prison studies to the case of Marta Olmos, recipient of Mexico’s first widely known sex reassignment. Overall, it demonstrates important intersections between sexology and nation-building projects related to criminology, anthropology, and eugenics, and how the attempted management of homosexuality and gender nonconformity sheds light on Mexican development more broadly. (shrink)

This paper explores how the social and affective lives of people with marginalized social identities are particularly affected by digital influences. Specifically, the paper examines whether and how social media enables LGBTQ+ people to experience feelings of belonging. It does so by drawing on literature from digital epistemology and phenomenology of the digital, and by presenting and analyzing the results of a qualitative study consisting of 25 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. The interviews were conducted to explore the social media experiences (...) of LGBTQ+ people through an empirical framework informed by both phenomenology and social epistemology, particularly feminist standpoint theory. The paper emphasizes the importance of positionality and the epistemic value of research that centers marginalized perspectives and employs an anti-oppressive research approach, and focuses on understanding the digital experiences of LGBTQ+ people from within their marginalized perspective. (shrink)

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) make possible a range of alternative family structures (i.e., families with single, unmarried or LGBTQ+ parents). However, some practices still decline provision of ART to single and diverse sexuality and gender (DSG) individuals. Fertility clinics across the United States vary in terms of the options they provide to these patients (Wu et al., Fertil Steril 108(1):183–191, 2017). Those clinics who appropriately favor equal access to fertility services, regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity, emphasize (...) that single and DSG individuals often desire biologically related children and have the autonomy to seek out fertility care to support those interests. They emphasize justice (i.e., that different treatment is only justified when there is a morally relevant difference between cases) and the “right to reproduce” (De Wert et al., Hum Reprod Oxf Engl 29(9):1859–1865, 2014). Clinics who do not support equal access to fertility treatment question the welfare of children born into alternative family structures, despite clear evidence to undermine this concern, and inappropriately prioritize professional autonomy (APA, Published online 2004; van Rijn-van Gelderen, J Adolesc 40:65–73, 2015; Farr, Dev Psychol 53(2):252–264, 2017; Goldberg et al., J Fam Psychol 27(3):431–442, 2013). Marital status, sexual orientation and gender identity do not impact parenting ability and thus physicians have an ethical duty to treat unmarried and DSG individuals in the same manner as heterosexual married couples when determining which services to provide (ASRM Ethics Committee, Fertil Steril 116(2):326–330, 2021). (shrink)

In the 1987 Hollywood film Fatal Attraction, the protagonist Dan Gallagher, played by Michael Douglas, is a successful, wealthy Manhattan lawyer with an attractive wife and a daughter he dotes on. At the beginning of the film, he could not be more satisfied with his happy, conventional life. This all changes after an encounter with Alex Forrest, a seductive female played by Glenn Close. They meet at a business party and have a brief but memorable conversation. Not knowing if they (...) will ever meet again, they are surprised — and delighted — to encounter one another at a business meeting the following day, but Dan restrains his urge to flirt with her. After the meeting, he rushes outside on the way to his next appointment. Rain is bucketing down, but his umbrella refuses to unfurl. Emerging from the building at that moment, Alex comes up to him and jokingly asks,... (shrink)

In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu demonstrates how queer Marxist critics in China use queer theory as a non-liberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation, and in doing so, he revises current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

Queering Paradigms IVa: Insurgências queer ao Sul do equador, junto com o volume Queering Paradigms IV: South-North Dialogues on Queer Epistemologies, Embodiments and Activisms (Lewis et al. 2014), divulga de forma multilíngue pesquisas apresentadas no 4° Congresso Internacional Queering Paradigms (QP4), sediado no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Ambos os volumes compartilham o objetivo de analisar o status quo e os desafios para o futuro dos Estudos Queer a partir de uma perspectiva inter/multidisciplinar, concentrando-se sobre as relações entre os eixos Sul-Norte. (...) O presente livro oferece capítulos escritos em português e espanhol, línguas subalternas na academia global, visando a privilegiar vozes e conhecimentos do Sul. Os trabalhos reunidos neste volume insurgem contra a colonização epistemológica dos corpos que habitam o Sul global e apontam para os problemas que surgem quando a(s) Teoria(s) Queer do Norte são aplicadas sem adaptação a outros contextos. Além de violências epistemológicas, a falta de atenção ao que acontece ao sul do equador pode levar a uma paralização do debate queer. O convite que esses capítulos fazem é um desafio a olhar para onde não se costuma olhar e ouvir as vozes que não se costuma ouvir, de forma a devolver ao queer seu potencial de contestação. Queering Paradigms IVa: Insurgências queer ao Sul do equador, junto con el tomo Queering Paradigms IV: South-North Dialogues on Queer Epistemologies, Embodiments and Activisms (Lewis et al. 2014), difunde de forma multilingüe algunas de las investigaciones presentadas en el 4o Congreso Internacional Queering Paradigms (QP4), en Río de Janeiro, Brasil. Ambos tomos comparten el objetivo de analizar el estado actual y los desafíos para el futuro de los Estudios Queer desde una perspectiva inter/multidisciplinaria, concentrándose sobre las relaciones entre el eje Sur-Norte. El presente libro ofrece capítulos escritos en portugués y español, lenguas subalternas en la academia global, con la pretensión de privilegiar voces y conocimientos del Sur. Los trabajos reunidos en este tomo se insurgen contra la colonización epistemológica de los cuerpos que habitan el Sur global y apuntan a los problemas que surgen cuando la(s) Teoría(s) Queer del Norte son aplicadas sin adaptación a otros contextos. Además de las violencias epistemológicas, la falta de atención a lo que acontece al sur del Ecuador puede llevar a una paralización del debate queer. La propuesta de estos capítulos es un desafío a mirar para dónde no se suele mirar y a escuchar las voces que no se suelen escuchar, para devolverle al queer su potencial de contestación. (shrink)

L'objectif de cet essai est d'aborder philosophiquement l'homosexualité. Une généalogie de l'homosexualité cherche à en comprendre l'évolution de sa définition, de sa valeur, de son image, et cherche à comprendre pourquoi l'homosexualité a été si marginalisée. Pour construire cette généalogie, l'auteur a mené un travail historique, juridique et phénoménologique. La question de l'homosexualité a permis d'avancer sur des questions anthropologiques et aborder différemment le débat du sens du politique.

Con el apoyo de su querida familia Chicanx, una niña llamada Chabelita descubre que está bien que le gusten las niñas.

O presente artigo investiga as intervenções urbanas – pertencentes a um grupo composto por muitas manifestações artísticas realizadas no espaço público – que dialogam com a cidade. Compreendidas como práticas artísticas e socioespaciais, as intervenções urbanas do coletivo lesbiano Velcro Choque (Brasil) são analisadas a partir das potências que surgem com a ocupação das ruas da cidade e da esfera pública, já que tal ato coloca em cheque normas e narrativas históricas, que serão apontadas a partir do viés da crítica (...) feminista da cultura. Conforme mostra a prática do coletivo, o artivismo associado aos feminismos e às dissidências sexuais e de gênero podem oportunizar a criação de subjetividades libertárias e formas de existência e resistência através das produções coletivas nas artes visuais.Palavras-chave: Cidade. Intervenção Urbana. Feminismos. Artivismo. AbstractThis paper investigates urban interventions – belonging to a group composed of many artistic manifestations carried out in the public space – that dialogue with the city. Understanding the urban interventions as an artistic and socio-spatial practice, the production of the lesbian collective Velcro Choque (Brazil) will be analyzed based on the potency that emerges with the occupation of the streets and the public sphere, since this act can put in check historical norms and narratives, which will be pointed out from the bias of the feminist critic of the culture. As the practice of the collective shows, artivism associated with feminism, sexual and gender dissidences can create opportunities for the creation of libertarian subjectivities and forms of existence and resistance through collective productions in the visual arts.Keywords: City. Urban Interventions. Feminisms. Artivism. (shrink)

A common belief is that, among our sexual dispositions, sexual orientations are important and deep features of who someone is. This distinguishes them from other sexual dispositions—“mere” preferences—that are thought to be trivial in comparison. Is there a way to adequately account for this distinction? What is a plausible explanation for the belief that sexual orientation is a deep and important feature of who one is? This paper defends one necessary condition for a sexual disposition to be an orientation, the (...) well-being condition: if a sexual disposition is an orientation, then the inability to act on it lowers one’s well-being by rendering one’s life sexually deprived. The paper argues that the well-being condition better explains than other criteria the belief that orientations are important features of who one is. The paper concludes by tracing the implications of this view to the common understanding of sexual orientation. (shrink)

‘What is ‘sexual orientation’ for?’ is a question we need to answer when addressing a more seemingly basic one, ‘what is sexual orientation?’. The concept of sexual orientation is grounded in the concepts of sex and/or gender since it refers to the sex or gender of the individuals one is sexually attracted to. Typical categories of sexual orientation such as ’heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘bi-sexual’ all rely on a sex or gender binary. Yet, it is now common practice to recognize sex (...) and gender categories that transcend the binary. Should our sexual orientation categories be revised to reflect sex and gender diversity? Drawing on the example of pansexuality, I argue that they should. The reason is that one aim of reconstructing the concept of sexual orientation—in addition to the epistemic goal of understanding— should also be political: it should make it easier to argue for the protection of those who have been marginalized or discriminated against because their sexual attraction is other than heterosexual. (shrink)

The decriminalisation of homosexuality was a measure originally adopted by the bourgeois revolutions, which was abandoned by the bourgeois parties as the rise of the labour movement led the bourgeoisie to seek a compromise with landlords, clergy and monarchy in different countries. The demand to decriminalise homosexuality was therefore taken over by the Marxist workers’ parties, such as the Social-Democratic Party of Germany before the First World War and the Bolshevik Party in Russia after the Revolution of October 1917. This (...) article outlines the cooperation between the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee led by Magnus Hirschfeld and Social Democracy to decriminalise homosexuality by removing Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code before the First World War. It also describes the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia under Lenin, with the adoption of the first Soviet Penal Code in June 1922, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s relations with prominent figures of the early Soviet government such as N.A. Semashko, the first People’s Commissar of Public Health, and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People’s Commissar for Education. Those ties ceased with the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933, which resulted in the destruction of the institutions created by Hirschfeld, such as the Institute for Sexual Science and the World League for Sexual Reform, while in the Soviet Union itself Stalin recriminalised homosexuality in March 1934, shortly before Hirschfeld’s death, linking homosexuality and fascism. (shrink)

Queer ecology is a cultural, political, and social analysis that interrogates the relations between the social organization of sexuality and ecology. As a part of this analysis, this article explores the ideas and practices of lesbian separatist communities in southern Oregon. It considers that separatists have, since 1974, developed a distinct political-ecological culture to challenge the heterosexual, patriarchal, and capitalist organization of rural North America. Although lesbian separatism was founded on essentialist constructions of gender and nature, the Oregon communities have (...) developed, over time, a blend of lesbian principles and local environmental knowledge. This has produced a complex tradition of lesbian ecopolitical resistance. Organizing threads of this tradition include opening access to land and transforming relations of rural ownership, withdrawing land from patriarchal-capitalist production and reproduction, feminizing the landscape ideologically and physically, developing a gender-bending physical experience of nature, experiencing nature as an erotic partner, and politicizing rurality and rural lesbian identity. (shrink)