The Invention of Bad Gay Sex: Texas and the           Creation of a Criminal Underclass of Gay People

Orio, Scott De

doi:10.7560/jhs26103

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Here, the central aim has been to show that sex work not only reproduces neoliberal and heteronormative logics but can also subvert the former and is also 'outside of the (hetero) norm' (Smith and Laing, 2012). It is in this sense that former engagements of queer theory with sex work fall short, as they address sex work as just another form of sexual deviance excluded from recognition and rights, alongside polyamorous groups, fetishists, sadomasochists, persons with AIDS and so on (Weeks, 1985;Warner, 2000;Rubin, 2002;De Orio, 2017). This, however, deprives sex work of precisely the features that make it especially subversive of heteronormativity and neoliberalism: its dissociation of sex from identity and disruption of the sex-economy dichotomy (Zatz, 1997;Smith, 2020).…”

Section: Filling the Gaps: Queer Theory Eu Lgbti Politics And Queer S...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, both queer theory and the literature on EU LGBTI politics largely ignore the role of sex work in such processes of assimilation and exclusion. When sex work is addressed, moreover, it is as just another form of sexual deviance excluded from recognition and rights, not work (Weeks, 1985;Warner, 2000;Rubin, 2002;De Orio, 2017). As the emerging approaches that address sex work from a queer perspective argue, however, this deprives sex work of precisely the features that make it subversive of both heteronormativity and neoliberalism: its dissociation of sex from identity and disruption of the sex-economy dichotomy (Zatz, 1997;Smith, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies

Rubio Grundell

2024

European Journal of Politics and Gender

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In this article, I analyse the constitutive effects of the exclusion of sex work for the European Union’s (EU’s) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual (LGBTI) policies. I combine queer theory, the literature on EU LGBTI politics and approaches that address sex work from a queer perspective and develop a discursive analysis of the EU’s LGBTI policies between 1984 and 2020. I argue that the EU’s LGBTI policies exclude sex work in various ways and that such exclusion is constitutive of the EU’s LGBTI policies themselves, in particular, when sex work is framed in neo-abolitionist terms. Specifically, the EU’s LGBTI policies exclude sex work as a constitutive other against which the neoliberal and homonormative sexual subject of rights and new sexual respectability that structures such policies are constructed. The exclusion of sex work from the EU’s LGBTI policies is thus indispensable to disciplining political subjectivity and sexuality in line with heteronormativity and neoliberalism in such terms.

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Section: Filling the Gaps: Queer Theory Eu Lgbti Politics And Queer S...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies

Rubio Grundell

2024

European Journal of Politics and Gender

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“…LGBTQ activists and their progressive allies were particularly successful at challenging the legal mistreatment of gay sex between consenting adults in private and the police harassment of gay bars-in the process helping throw the war on sex offenders into a crisis of legitimacy (Eskridge 2008, 388-407;De Orio 2017a). In that context, the architects of the war on sex offenders shifted gears, increasingly leaving good LGBTQ people alone while doubling down especially on sexual activity involving men and boys but also on public and "promiscuous" sex in the age of AIDS (Pan 1980;Hoppe 2017, 101-31).…”

Section: Introduction: the Missing History Of "Bad" Queers In The Lat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bad Queers: LGBTQ People and the Carceral State in Modern America

Orio¹

2021

Law Soc. Inq.

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The war on sex offenders was an American campaign against sex crime that began in the 1930s and is still ongoing. In this review essay, I argue that the architects and opponents of that war engaged in political struggles that—especially during the pivotal era of the long 1970s—produced, criminalized, and hierarchized multiple new categories of “good” and “bad” LGBTQ legal subjects. In making this argument, my aim is to bring the field of LGBTQ political and legal history—especially the work of George Chauncey ([1994] 2019) and Margot Canaday (2009)—into closer conversation with scholarship by queer theorists who are not historians—especially Gayle Rubin ([1984] 2011a) and Michael Warner (1999)—about the stigmatization of non-normative gender and sexual practices. While historians have examined the policing of multiple queer behaviors in the early twentieth century, their examinations of the post-1945 period have been concerned primarily with the consolidation of a starker social and legal binary between homo- and heterosexuality. As their narratives get closer to the present, the most stigmatized “bad” queers become more and more tangential. At least in part, this has been because historians have been under the same pressure as LGBTQ activists to distance LGBTQ identity from the stigma of sexual “deviance”—especially sex that violated age-of-consent statutes—in order to promote the political project of LGBTQ rights. Placing bad queers at the center of LGBTQ political and legal history diversifies who counts as a subject of this history and reveals an even bigger carceral state that governed them.

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Same Same but Different? Gender, sex work, and respectability politics in the MyRedBook and Rentboy closures

Majic¹

2020

ATR

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Among the many policies implemented to eradicate trafficking in the sex industry, US government agencies have targeted online platforms that market and facilitate sex work. In this paper, I consider two instances of this activity: the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2014 raid and subsequent closing of MyRedbook.com, and the Department of Homeland Security’s 2015 raid and closing of Rentboy.com. Drawing from a qualitative-interpretive analysis of the media coverage of these raids, I show that the responses to them emphasised how the sites’ closures increased both men’s and women’s economic vulnerability, but the similarities largely ended there. Instead, I argue broadly that public responses to these events reflected and reinforced gendered notions of women’s vulnerability and men’s agency in the sex industry. While these responses may seem unsurprising, they are also potentially productive, calling into question the limits of respectability politics and signalling new solidarities in the struggle for sex worker rights.

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The Invention of Bad Gay Sex: Texas and the Creation of a Criminal Underclass of Gay People

Cited by 4 publications

References 43 publications

Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies

Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies

Bad Queers: LGBTQ People and the Carceral State in Modern America

Same Same but Different? Gender, sex work, and respectability politics in the MyRedBook and Rentboy closures

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