I promised in the Summer that I would publish my my most recent article on here once it was available. It's not yet available on Hein but it is here. I'd appreciate any feedback/thoughts. I'm aiming to speak further about this work at conferences over the next 9 months but funding is rather tight at the moment.You can make the Slideshare viewer full screen (the arrow icon, bottom right corner of the pane) or if you click the underlined title/link below you will have the option to 'download' (and then print, read more easily) from the Slideshare site.(Homo)normative legal discourses and the queer challenge
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Interesting article.
One note: Mark Simpson does not 'claim' to have coined the term 'metrosexual' - he did coin it. And you can reference that coinage in his book Metrosexy (2011) if you like.
However I think your paper is 'homonormative' itself as it is talking about queer people as 'gay' and 'lesbian' and ignoring bisexual people, trans people, gender queer people, and people who do not identify as 'queer' at all, but still practice queer sexualities.
You also seem to be suggesting it is queer men who are challenging homonormativity by practising bareback sex or having sex in public places for example. Are men more challenging to homonormativity than women? If you think that, I think you should explain how and why.
And, in keeping with Foucault's point at the end, sexuality has to be examined in terms of 'who is speaking' and the institutional power in which they speak.
You are a white gay male academic with all the institutional power that goes with that, and if you do not reflect on your own position when speaking you are also contributing to reinforcing 'homonormativity'.
I also think Simpson's theory of metrosexuality is as big, if not a bigger challenge to 'homonormativity' than Anti Gay.
Because metrosexuality focuses on the blurring of boundaries between 'gay' and 'straight'. Part of the reason Simpson rejects the 'gay' identity is that he rejects how it suggests only 'gay men' have sex with other 'gay men'. That's why bisexuality is so important, because it throws that assumption out of the window.
And metrosexuality includes elements of 'bisexuality' - men inviting the gaze and attention of other men, without having to embody a gay identity.
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