Tag: Queer Theory
Dysphoria
“The aim of this month’s posts is to interrogate our need to reconstruct our bodies, minds, and identities to fit the cultural standards of who and what we should be.” — Natalie El-Eid, “New Year, New You … True You?,” January 8, 2019 Write something, Write something, Write anything,Write About bodies, about my body, about
“Blindspots” and Bright Spots
I’m very excited to see Disney’s new Live-Action Beauty and the Beast, and not just because it was my favorite animated Disney movie growing up. Allow me to explain: *** The girl who takes my fast-food order has conspicuous miniature band-aids over her dimples, raised away from the skin by the dermal jewelry they
Facebook and Uncanny Identity
I’m sitting in a meeting at the LGBT Resource Center. It’s Monday night, a few weeks past now. They have a large comfy couch, free pizza, brightly colored artwork on the walls, posters for other events. It’s only six in the evening, but I’m exhausted. Not the I-didn’t-get-enough-sleep-because-coursework kind of tired, but the soul-weary exhaustion
“Are You Gay?”: Public Space, the Closet, and the Exercise of Privilege
For my month of posts for this blog, I want to talk about privilege and the way in which it operates in everyday interactions and spaces. We all hear people talk about privilege–and in particular about how it operates as part of and within systems of oppression–but rarely do we actually think about how it
A life is made of critical appreciation
The curious thing about the arts is how they flow across geographical limitations like no other stream of study or career. Art has an organic capability to mold itself in the vision of its audience no matter what its origins were. The story of a French boy who finds an extremely spherical balloon that has
Coda: Asexual Awareness Week and the Future of Queer Theory
Last week, I completed the Safer People, Safer Spaces training my university offers to learn better ways to be an ally, whether you’re a member or a supporter of the queer community. One of the activities we did involved matching vocabulary words (like lesbian, heteronormativity, drag, M2F) to their definitions and then discussing what we
Queering LGBT History: The Case of Sherlock Holmes Fanfic
This summer, I fell for BBC’s “Sherlock” hard1 — hard enough to drive me back to fanfic. Fanfic has grown up in the past decade: it now has activists, “aca-fans” (academic fans), and copyright lawyers, and a nonprofit defending artists’ rights to disseminate transformative works, including fiction. My casual intention to fill the wait till
Overwriting History: “Just Reading” and the Case of John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman has been in my Twitter feed a lot lately. Apparently, when this Victorian cardinal wasn’t writing his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, the nineteenth century’s longest and driest autobiography (sorry, Newman), he wrote religious commentary that some people still find instructive. But it wasn’t all that long ago that Newman was in the
A History of LGBT History
October is a beautiful month. My favorite bike trail smells like toast, crumbly apple crisp becomes a perfect midterm snack, and the trees are a rainbow of fire. When I walk past the striated maple on my way from class, I secretly like to think that maybe this is why October is LGBT history