Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Tendency

Gay sees herself as an intersection of the black, woman, and feminist communities, making her a hybrid of the three, giving her a distinct community to identify with as well as broader groups. She identifies as a woman and acknowledges all of the expectations and stereotypes that accompanies. On the other hand, her fundamental views on gender equality gives her the ability to empathize with the feminist community. Nevertheless, in every group of people, everyone is a distinct individual with a distinct number of characteristics, both physical and emotional, that sets them apart from the person next to them. As a woman of color, Gay has a list of additional concerns and interests that pertains to her specific experience that are not necessarily included throughout the entire group of feminists. Gay could be branched off into dozens of more sects and factions that pertain to specific

The articles by Roderick Ferguson (2004) in his book literally highlights the regulation that established sociological schools of thought impose upon the ‘queer people of color,’ or anyone who is different in terms of sexual orientation and non-white. In the very early part of the book, Ferguson depicts the imagery of a black drag-queen prostitute from Marlon Riggs’ ‘Tongues Untied.’ He goes on to describe the way capitalism, in general, and the American system in particular has conveniently excluded many like her – people of alternative sexual preferences with both African American culture and Leftist Liberal thought rooted in the heterogeneity. (Ferguson, 2004, p. 3). It is at this point that through the work of Chandan Reddy, Ferguson reminds the reader that the core of Leftist-Liberal Marxist thought revolves around the abolishment of race, gender and sexuality.

The present essay aims to analyse and discuss how social actions related to gender and sexuality have given rise to social change. Particular attention will be given to how views and opinions on gender and sexuality have positively evolved throughout the years as a result of decades of social activism led by the members and allies of the LGBT community. In order to do so, the current paper will firstly provide a concise account of how gender and sexuality were seen in the former times, which will be then compared to more current perspectives. Secondly, the paper will present a brief overview of the history of the LGBT movement, and highlight its main milestones. Significant emphasis will be given to how these salient occurrences have significantly affected today’s perception and attitudes towards the LGBT community in the majority of the world countries. In conclusion, the current essay will introduce and explore the recent ongoing activism that has been occurring globally within the LGBT community.

This paper will continue on, researching the societal change/acceptance in the gay and lesbian community as no longer being unorthodox and with the stigma coming from the gay community itself.

One’s gender identity represents who they are, whether they were born with male or female genitalia. Back in the 1900’s, “for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) folks in America, the efflorescence of sexual expression did not begin until the waning months of that decade in the heart of the nation’s then-largest bohemian enclave and gay ghetto, New York’s Greenwich Village” (Wolf). In the 60’s, being able to express who you were freely was pushed aside much too often. But because of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, their fight has helped people today be who they want to be without any discrimination. Over “four decades after the Stonewall riots, political leaders are now beginning to recognize the influence of the LGBT community, knocking down barriers to gay and lesbian participation in the military and nominating at least two transgender officials, for the first time in history, to senior posts in the federal government under the Obama administration” (Teal). Whether someone identifies as a man, woman, or neither, they are able to participate in any group regardless. Due to the Stonewall riots, no matter what no one can turn you down based off of your gender identity, which is causing political leaders to now think differently because of this monumental time in history where everyone can be accepted for who they want to

The word queer has been used to describe someone that does not fit into the social norms that the world sets, for example a girl that dresses masculine and has short hair is a queer. There are also people that fall into simple categories that use queer as an identifier for themselves, people in the gay lesbian and transgender communities often consider themselves to be queer as a sort of layman’s term today. An example of this in the ChYOR assignment would be the third ChYOR my article was on “queering art” bringing queer concepts to art, such as portraits of gay couples and dance duets with two male dancers. The article was very interesting because of the way that it talked about how little representation queer art has, and how that is slowly

Queer anthropology is often identified under cultural anthropology and combined with studies like gender studies. It focuses on the intersectionality of human life with various identities. Queer anthropologists ask questions around queer theory and how the social constructs of identity can be challenged to envelop a new wave of thinking. Looking back on historical trends like Stonewall, researchers can see how progressive – or not- society has become in teaching history beyond the normative. They can observe how queer history is often blocked out of education in favor of the

Unfortunately, although the Stonewall Riots and subsequent demonstrations helped to start a movement for the LGBTQ community, those who also additionally identified as belonging to an ethnic minority group found that their voices were lost in the crowd. The community in which the riots began housed a large population of New York’s African-Americans, especially those who also identified as LGBTQ, as the neighborhoods had become an established safe space for people of all kinds to express themselves (Farrow). The riots were no different from other protests in history that had broken out between white authority

Queer as Folk: Over the extent of of the United States’ history, we have had a lot of social movements. One of the most notable being the fight for equality for LGBTQI — that is, lesbian, gays, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and inter-sexual. The LGBTQ started its uprise in the ‘50s as homosexuals started to become more well known — not necessarily accepted, however — among society. The LGBTQI community has quickly progressed since the ‘50s and ‘60s, bringing along with it many social changes, transgressions, feelings of hate, misconceptions, and a plethora of stereotypes — changing society’s views on sex, marriage, love, and what it is to be human. It is important to understand the impact the LGBTQI community has had on our society, and which titles have made the greatest impact. Out of all six titles, one has became the most prominent in today’s society: gay men.

There seems to be a prevalent belief among queer theorists that there exists an archetype of the “ideal queer.” This person is subversive in everything that they do, and disrupts norms in all ways. Obviously, this ideal is different from dominant society’s view of the ideal queer - a person who keeps their identity to themself, is not “outwardly queer,” holds some type of stable corporate job, is “just like the rest of us” in all other aspects of being, and is decidedly non-radical. Of course, neither of these ideals are representative of the reality of LGBT individuals. Gender and sexual expression is infinitely varied, and cannot be boxed into categories which are palatable to one group or another. LGBT individuals who chose to marry or

For every Black man that is born, each is gifted with the rigid expectations of being a hyper-masculine male. These expectations seemed to be passed down through generations from family members. The study "African American Gay Youth and Their Families: Redefining Masculinity, Coping with Racism and Homophobia.”, portrays some of the hardships of coming out within this specific community. A mother who was interviewed in this study said “You are told to be a man … and being a man does not mean you sleep with other men,” she said. “Being a man means you have a woman and you procreate and continue the family name.” And for queer black men especially, this expectation of needing a woman to be the validation for your manhood takes a toll on them and their ability to feel safe in coming out. In this essay I intend to outline the problematic expectations and stigmatization of the black queer male community and develop ways in which this problem can start to be overcome while dealing with different sections of intersectionality.

As being developed by poststructuralism, feminism, lesbian & gay studies and even American pragmatist theory (Parker,2001; Seidman,1997), queer theory has become one of the most important theories, which contributes to the research of sociology, arts and organizations. On the one hand, queer theory has been used to study the relations between the sexuality, gender and workplace. On the other hand, by utilizing denaturalized, deconstructive and performative methods to queer the presumptions of the taken-for-granted norms, queer theorists question and disprove the traditions which people cherish (Seidman,1995).

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4

This week I will be focusing on Seidman and his views on queer theory and his basic views on human nature. Essentially, he claims that the perspective that being gay is an abnormality comes from the fact that the people examining the idea were privileged straight men who do not comprehend the concept. When these men established the heterosexual norm for society, no one really questioned the reasoning for it. Consequently, the gay population was a minority trying to maintain a presence within the vast majority as Seidman suggested on page 614. Seidman then goes on to suggest that the stigma associated with being gay is slowly phasing out as it becomes more normalized in modern day society. People are more willing to be accepting of sexual avenues

Gender and sexual orientation is a topic that has been and still today is not talked about in such a way it should be because of how society has chosen to structure and control it. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided up into layers according to their relative privileges (power, property, and prestige). It’s a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges (Vela-McConnell 2016). People, who deviate from the norm of the “accepted” gender and sexual orientation that society has placed upon us, are stratified below the norm of a dominating binary gender and sexual orientation. People who are queer face the struggle of mistreatment and an unaccepting society that has been socialized to see and act on gender and sexual orientation to being a dualistic system.