Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Transgression

Abstract

From the feminist 'sex wars' of the 1980s to the queer theory and politics of the 1990s, debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of contemporary theoretical, social, and political demands. This article seeks to intervene in these debates by challenging the terms through which they have been de ned. Investigating the importance of 'sex positivity' and transgression as conceptual features of feminist and queer discourses, this essay calls for a new focus on the political and material effects of pro-sexuality.

Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime sexual violence

“…In other words, recreational rape refers to the widely held belief among many (including perpetrators themselves) of the force of male-heterosexual desire, here theorized as productive of (and produced through) constructions of militarized masculinity. Hence, the notion of recreational rape "solves" the sexual through references to its construction (as it does in Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2009 noted above) without seriously engaging the rich body of feminist work noted above that does the risky work of probing the connections between violence, erotics, sexual desire, and pleasure (e.g., MacKinnon 1989;Cahill 2001; see also Glick 2000). Boesten, who asks questions about the melding of brutality and individual pleasure, the collective "consumption of torture porn" and the seduction of racist domination that was at play in soldiers' acts of sexual violence in the Peruvian warscape goes perhaps farthest (to our knowledge) in posing such questions (Boesten 2014, 30-35).…”

Is it Really Just About Being More Like a Fag? Confronting the Gay Male Model Mantra

“…As an avowed feminist and lesbian (sometimes queer) myself, I find appalling this oft-repeated assertion that all queer subjects and those theorists who espouse the promises of queer, are simply privileging a male subjectivity in general, and gay male identity in particular (see Glick 2000;Jeffreys 2003;Nussbaum 1999). Walters makes this essentialist move when, in one moment describing the inability and sheer fallaciousness of lumping queer theorists together-in this case, Sedgwick, Rubin, Butler, and Warner, goes on, in the next moment, to state the following: ''I would argue that they all, to a certain extent, share a problematic perspective on feminism and the women's movement and have engaged, in different ways of course, with gay male identity as a site of privileged subjectivity' ' (1996, p. 836).…”

“…Genderfuck, and gender transgression more generally, are depicted at times as the equivalent to say, Halloween, where you don a costume, pretend to be something or someone else, only to take it off when the party ends (Glick 2000;Jeffreys 2003). Treating all gender transgression with such triviality might have something to do with the overwrought words such as play, irony, parody, and pastiche that are repeated time and again whenever a description of ''queer'' is given.…”

Sex After Life: Essays on Extinction, Volume Two

“…In a remarkably lucid article, Elisa Glick (2000) has criticized Judith Butler's 'linguistic idealism' and privileging of representational politics in favor of a more Marxist interrogation of the lived practices and historical and economic contexts from which practices such as 'drag' emerge. Glick draws on David Harvey's work to argue that Butler reinforces a postmodern capitalist lifestyle commodity culture in her emphasis on performativity (precisely because performance effects, rather than follows, subjectivity …”