How to be Gay

American academic David Halperin has a new book out (I've only just ordered it myself) entitled 'How to Be Gay', and the writer/thinker Mark Simpson has an interview with him in Out.  You can check it out here.

Archive Q&A with Gayle Rubin

The GLBT Archives have a really interesting short section in their new newsletter, featuring Gayle Rubin. A pioneer of feminist theory, queer theory and leather history, Gayle S. Rubin is a founding member of the GLBT Historical Society and an associate professor of anthropology, women's studies and comparative literature at the University of Michigan.  Her work is essential reading for my law and sexuality students and students of sexuality around the world.

The short piece asks three questions about archives:

How do archival collections like those held by the GLBT Historical Society support the production of knowledge about queer cultures? 

Without primary source material, we are "people without a history." Our knowledge tends to be mired at the level of anecdote and circulating assumptions that can't be checked against evidence. We are stuck with mythologies, some positive and some negative, whose veracity cannot be ascertained. There are so many things that one hears, things that "everyone knows," that actually turn out to be superficial, misleading or wrong. Only primary sources allow us to assess such ideas and claims. In addition, there are important stories that have been lost or buried or forgotten that can be resurrected through archival collections and oral histories.

University libraries have started developing GLBT special collections. Does that mean we no longer need community-based GLBT archives? 

 I welcome the entry of university libraries into these fields, but they have limitations. Focused topical collections often depend on some individual within the library system and do not always continue if that person leaves. In addition, university libraries may not be as comfortable about collecting certain materials or making them accessible -- for example, sexually explicit materials or those pertaining to various queer subcultures. Moreover, public institutions may be subject to political pressures. So a certain amount of redundancy is a very good thing: Having material dispersed among different kinds of institutions and in different locations makes it more likely to survive unpredictable events and unknown futures.

What can we do to ensure that community-based GLBT archives continue to grow and thrive? 

There is sometimes a lack of appreciation for what a Herculean task it is to develop and maintain institutions such as the GLBT Historical Society and its museum. They are often taken for granted, or treated as if they are as stable, well funded and well staffed as mainstream institutions. When I am in the museum or at the archives, I can only marvel at their existence and be grateful for all the work that has gone into the fact that they are here. Perhaps this is particularly poignant for me because I remember when we did not have them and I know what it has taken to get to this point. The GLBT Historical Society and The GLBT History Museum are among the most important accomplishments of the LGBT movement in San Francisco -- but they are works in progress. To continue to grow and thrive, they need volunteer energy, money to operate, and donations of research materials. At a minimum, please understand what these places are, what it takes to have them, and give them the recognition and appreciation that they so richly deserve. The Historical Society is a queer public good and a community treasure, but like all such institutions, it requires maintenance and cultivation. As I recently wrote, those who fail to secure the transmission of their histories are doomed to lose them.

Read more about the wonderful San Francisco museum and archive here.

Call for Papers: Forthcoming Feminisms: Gender Activism, Politics and Theories

Readers may be interested in the following CFP.

Call for Papers: Forthcoming Feminisms: Gender Activism, Politics and Theories
Organised by the BSA Gender Study Group & the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS), University of Leeds 

26th October 2012: Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, University of Leeds

Keynote Speakers: Julia Downes (Durham); Sasha Roseneil ((tbc) Birkbeck); Imogen Tyler (Lancaster) 

'Forthcoming Feminisms: Gender Activism, Politics and Theories' seeks to explore the contemporary landscape of gender politics and theory at a crucial moment of feminist resurgence. Against the backdrop of political economies of austerity, in which women are disproportionately disadvantaged, and in challenge to ‘post-feminist’ cultural prophecies, current times indicate a renewed interest in, and commitment to, feminism. In academic climates, while women’s and gender study programs face threats of closure, the popularity of such programmes continues to grow; reflecting the continuation of feminist and gender theory as a flourishing and dynamic arena. This conference speaks to these political and theoretical paradoxes and flows in exploring varied (and sometimes opposing) feminist cultures, values, ethics, knowledges, challenges and aspirations across the levels of the social and cultural. The conference aims to examine these issues in relation to temporality: how do current feminisms speak to those of the past and how might we imagine feminisms’ future?; the micro and the macro: how do grass roots feminist politics respond to structural processes and materialities?; the local and global: what are the similarities and differences – the uniting and dividing features - of national and international feminisms?; place and culture: how are feminisms formed through, and in opposition to, fields of habitus and spaces of public/private; citizenship and recognition: who can – and who can’t – find a place within feminism, who is – and who isn’t – able to ‘belong’?; equality and diversity: to what extent has feminism been mainstreamed?, what are the effects of this on gender studies and politics in and outside the academy?; intersectionality: how do social identities and material positionings impact on feminist commitments and lived experiences?, how do patterns of inequality bear on feminist aspirations and imaginings?; difference: how can feminism productively interact with trans and queer politics, theories, and communities?, how can feminism account for embodied diversities? Papers that address these questions through the following themes are particularly welcome: • Sites of Activism • Political Agendas • Knowledges and Ethics • Spaces and Places • Gender Mainstreaming • Feminisms at the Local and Global • Intersections of Class, Race, Ethnicity, Faith, Age, Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment • Feminist Times and Generations • Agency and Affect • Political Economies • Inclusions and Exclusions • Transgender and Queer Feminisms • Representation, Media and New Technologies

Presenters will be invited to submit papers for a Special Journal Edition Please send your abstract + brief bio to Sally Hines: s.hines@leeds.ac.uk and to Zowie Davy: z.davy@lincoln.ac.uk by 27th July 2012 Registration fee: £30 non-BSA members, £20 BSA members. Registration will be free for 5 PG students/activists on a first come, first served basis.

Civil Partnerships? Tate Modern, 19th May, 2012

This looks a great event for those of you lucky enough to be in London...

Reflecting on the politics and practices of queer and feminist art curating, this symposium invites presentations from an international line-up of artists, curators and critics to address a set of key questions: how do feminist and queer projects emerge as art exhibitions? Can queers and feminists get along with the institutional art world? And can they get along with each other? Your conference ticket also allows free entry to the Axe Grinding Workshop and David Hoyle’s Queer Tate Tour on the evening of the 18^th May. Workshop places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

More info here.

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?

This is the name of a new book from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore which will be available in the UK alter in the year.  I managed to get a copy sent over from the States last myth but other than a quick skim, I've not yet managed to read it properly.  However, it's already got many academics and folks interested in sexuality chatting about the ideas in this radical collection.  SF Weekly carries an interview with Sycamore in which she talks about her ideas and this new edited collection.

You can check it out here.

Homonormativity and the New Legal Citizenship: Viva Oppression?

Yesterday I presented an internal seminar on some of my ongoing work.  I published an article early this Autumn in Durham Law Review 'setting the theoretical scene' and plan on some further work coming out in the next couple of years (such is the speed of academic publishing) that develops my ideas around (homo)normativity.

The work is part of a series of Brown Bag seminars organised by the Law and Society research Cluster at the University, which I lead and organise.  You can check out the slides from my brief talk below and you can download the full article here.

Homonormative brown bag

View more presentations from Chris Ashford.

You can view the full Law and Society seminar programme for 2011-12 below.

Law and society brown bag 2011 12

View more documents from Chris Ashford

Legal Spaces, Queer Spaces: The Castro

Law is a vital ingredient in the construction of space, notably that space which has been defined as 'queer'.  Whether in the form of Manchester's Canal Street or San Francisco's Castro, these 'communities' within a community, these villages', or 'ghettos' are a product of changing laws, offering a space defined by identity - and offering a place of inclusion whislt also excluding a class of citizen not deemed 'desirable'.  Often their mere existence is a result of legal oppression elsewhere yet increasingly these spaces fall under the gaze of city officials seeking to 'clean up' a space.  So it is interesting to see the way that legal powers are being applied with zeal by District 8 Supervisor Scott Weiner (a surprising number of US politicians with that name - by which I mean more than one) as he launches further proposed powers.

The Bay Area Reporter notes that smoking and camping would be banned and set hours for sitting on movable benches and chairs would be imposed at the Castro's two street plazas under new rules proposed by Weiner. The restrictions would apply to Jane Warner Plaza on 17th Street near Market and across the street at Harvey Milk Plaza above the Castro Muni station. The ordinance would specify that Jane Warner Plaza, the city's first Pavement to Parks project, falls under the rules that apply to the city's public parks. Wiener introduced the proposed rules on November 15 at the request of the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District, which oversees maintenance of the outdoor areas. The Board of Supervisors is expected to begin holding hearings on them in early 2012.

These are similar spaces to those you might see in New York - bits of the road/street that have been re-designated 'plazas' with chairs/tables/planted trees/palms and other street furniture.  I rather like them, and in the Castro they've always seemed busy spaces, and important social 'hubs'.

A legal technicality means that the plazas are still classed as 'street's, and so this change puts them on the same legal footing as parks.  So whilst street signs are up saying 'no smoking' (I confess, I never noticed them), they are not enforceable.  Leaving aside this remorseless attack on smoking (which in itself drives me crazy), the measures also mean that sitting on chairs or benches that are not permanent structures in either plaza would only be allowed between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m (which seems nuts). Sleeping would also be banned in both plazas any hour of the day which is not about ensuring that Castro citizens remain conscious in public at all times (elf and safety gone mad someone shouts), oh no, it's about ensuring that there is a reason so shift on those nasty homeless people.  "you can't sleep there", "who says?" can now be responded with some Americanisation of "it's the law innit".

The measures are not without opposition; queer activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca (for it is he) called the latest planned restrictions "more anti-homeless bigotry from Wiener and the folks at the CBD", he added: "Harvey Milk Plaza has always been a symbol of the freedom of the Castro, it's the place where Milk got up on a soap box and expressed his opinion about things," wrote Avicolli Mecca in an email, referring to the gay former city supervisor and Castro merchant the plaza honors. "Gay men have always stood and talked or congregated at any hours of the day and night in the plaza ... Now Wiener and the CBD want to impose restrictions on the plaza, such as no sitting on the benches after 9 p.m., that are intended only to stop a certain group of people from sitting or using the plaza."

BAR noted that Mecca predicted that the police would use the seating restrictions to harass homeless people and underage queer youth who hang out at the plazas at night. "Forty years ago, this is the kind of legislation that was often used to restrict the use of public space by gay men. Now it's used against the homeless or those perceived as homeless," wrote Avicolli Mecca. "As we used to say in ACT UP, 'Shame, shame, shame!'"  Mecca is probably right and this is yet another curious development in the use of queer space, following  Weiner's previous attack on nudists in the area (towels now need to be put down on furniture before you sit on them).  Yes, you can still be nude in the Castro, but no bare bum on the furniture thank you.  I think people should put towels down, but I don't like laws that say such a thing - it seems rather heavy handed.  You can read more on that here (check out the fab photo too).

This comes amidst controversial and saddening reports of changes at the iconic Castro Theatre - reinforcing the message I keep privately getting from folks that live in the Castro  - it's an area increasingly less 'gay' and an area in economic trouble.  Weiner's legal reforms could (unintentionally) be part of this narrative of 'normalising' the Castro and reducing gay inhabitants to no more than performing monkeys for the tourists.  It's a perfect example of the importance of understanding the social, historical, political and theoretical context in which law operates and the passionate feelings it can generate when its force is felt.

Queer Pedagogy: Queering Our Teaching, Queering our Learning

This looks brilliant! A free online course on queer pedagogy through Peer-To-Peer University (P2PU) has kicked off this week. Although they are in the first week, they are looking for a few more participants. Details @ http://www.p2pu.org/en/groups/queer-pedagogy

If you've got the time, it looks a terrific opportunity.

Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities: Inaugural Lecture

North East based students, scholars and thinkers will be interested in attending this.  I would encourage my own students to attend - it will be relevant to your assessment!  I'll also be going along so hope to see some of you there.

Thursday 17th November
6:15 – 7.30pm Appleby Lecture Theatre
Durham University Science Site, South Road, DH1 3LE

We know that Durham has sometimes had the image of being something of a blue stocking among universities – well, not any more. On 17th November in Durham, the University’s new Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities is holding its inaugural lecture.

Titled ‘Equality, Diversity, Queer Theory and Children in the Modern Age’, the lecture will explore the issue of sexuality, queerness and children. It is being given by celebrated queer theorist, Professor Kathryn Bond-Stockton of the University of Utah. 

Professor Jo Phoenix is the Director of the new Durham-based Centre. She says: ‘The Centre for Sex, Gender, and Sexualities will be unique in the UK, so its creation is a break-through moment both for queer studies nationally and for the University. The Centre is going to shape, inform and influence the often contentious debates surrounding sexuality, gender, identity, equality and politics, while the fact that it is being created by what some might regard as a more traditional, establishment university shows how forward-thinking Durham really is.’

 Please arrive from 6.00 pm for registration. The lecture will start at 6.30 pm and will be followed by a drinks reception and nibbles from 7.30 pm. If you have colleagues or associates you think would be interested in attending, please let us know via your RSVP and we will be happy to include them on the guest list. Please note that places are limited and it is wise to reserve your place. RSVP to

JoPhoenix.csgs@durham.ac.uk by 10th November.

(Homo)normative legal discourses and the queer challenge

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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Event: SEXUAL CULTURES: THEORY, PRACTICE, RESEARCH

Readers may be interested in this forthcoming conference. I'm hoping to attend myself.

This conference, co-hosted by the Onscenity Research Network and the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences at Brunel University, will take place on April 20-22 2012 at Brunel University, London, UK.

http://www.onscenity.org/conf1/


Our keynote speakers are:


Martin Barker, Professor of Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University, UK

Violet Blue, blogger, columnist, sex educator, and author, US

Judith Halberstam, Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Gender Studies, University of Southern California, US

Katrien Jacobs, Associate Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong

Fiona Patten, Australian Sex Party


The key themes of the conference are:


Sex and technology

Technologies of all kinds have been central to the ways in which sex is understood and experienced in contemporary societies. We are interested in papers that explore evolving technologies in the presentation of sex through print, photography, film and video to todays online and mobile media; the ways that technologies are increasingly integrated into everyday sex lives; the expansion of sex technologies in toy, doll, machine and robot manufacture, the marketing of drugs such as Viagra and cosmetic technologies such as body modification and genital surgery for enhancing sex; the expansion of sex work and recreation online; sex 2.0 practices, regimes and environments such as porn tubes, sex chat rooms and worlds like Second Life; and the shifting relations between bodies and machines in the present and in predictions of futuresex.


The regulation of sex

Papers in this strand of the conference will examine how sexuality and the ways in which it is represented are the focus of government policy and subject to various forms of regulation. In democratic societies, sexuality is generally thought to be the domain of the private and personal, outside the ambit of the law whose function in this sphere is simply to maintain public decency. Yet vast amounts of institutional effort and resources are invested in what has come to be called moral regulation, in which self-governance and moral discourse are generally preferred to coercive forms of regulation. At the same time, governments continue to make certain forms of sexual practice and representation illegal. What are the limits of the legally possible today, both in terms of sexual behaviour and representation, and what are the various means employed to encourage us to behave properly in the sexual domain?


Working sex

In recent years sex work has become a potent site for the discussion of labour, commerce and sexual ethics, attracting increased academic attention and public concern. Papers in this strand of the conference will seek to develop our understanding of commercial sex, focus on conceptualizing emerging types of sexual labour, and explore the place of sex work of all kinds in contemporary society. They will ask how an investigation of contemporary forms of sex work and sex as work may shed new light on the study of cultural production, industry, commerce, and notions of commodification and labour. We are also seeking papers which are interested in exploring the connections between work and leisure, work and pleasure, sex work as forms of body and affective labour, and the ethics and politics of sexual labour.


Researching everyday sex

Research into sexuality can often be caught in a politics of anxiety where it is constructed as something that needs to be managed, protected and even guarded against. Sexuality is also understood as absolutely intrinsic to our sense of identity, an important indicator of mental and emotional health and a form of intimate communication and individual fulfillment, as well as an important site of pleasure and play. Papers in this strand of the conference will take as their focus the diverse sexual identities, practices, representations, values and experiences that make up the mundane and spectacular elements of everyday sexual life. We seek papers that examine the politics and/or ethics of researching everyday sexualities, as well as the lived realities of sex in the quotidian.


We invite proposals for the following:

Panels and roundtable discussions of up to four speakers

Papers (20 minutes)

Short Ignite papers (5 minutes/20 slides)

Posters


Deadline for the submission of proposals is October 31 2011.


For all individual papers please submit a 150 word abstract and 150 word biographical note.

Please indicate which key theme of the conference your paper belongs to.


For panels and roundtable sessions please submit a 600-800 overview and set of abstracts with 150 word biographical notes.

Please indicate which key theme of the conference your paper belongs to.


Please submit your proposals to conference@onscenity.org


Onscenity is funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council and draws together international experts in order to respond to the new visibility or onscenity of sex in commerce, culture and everyday life. The network is committed to working towards developing new approaches to the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. Drawing on the work of leading scholars from around the world, it aims to map a transformed landscape of sexual practices and co-ordinate a new wave of research.

Fire Up the Orgasmatron!

The Guardian carries a wonderful feature piece today from Christopher Turner. It comes in advance of a book from Turner (to be published next month) exploring Wilhelm Reich and his orgone energy accumulator. A must read, check it out here.

Let's Talk About Sex: Paul Morris

Earlier this month, Let's Talk About Sex posted two wonderful and important pieces - extended 'interviews' with Treasure Island Media head-honcho, Paul Morris. Porn's quintessential bête noire for his advocacy of bareback sex, and his recent move into openly HIV positive porn.

I'm speaking about Morris, queer theory and treasure Island Media next week in San Francisco (the city the company is based in) at the Law and Society Annual Conference. If anyone fancies a chat over a beer or cup of tea while I'm in town, give me a shout on email or via twitter.

Anyhow, I was also interested to see him champion FTM queer porn performer, James Darling who I've previously mentioned, and how very kindly did a Q&A with my students last year (check that video out here).

The first part of the interview can be read here and the second part here. The interview was also reproduced on the Treasure Island Media blog with a Q&A for fans/readers, asking:

'What books does Paul suggest reading for those interested in the “extremely complex psycho-social functions and meanings of queer sex”?'

The answer was:

Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Lee Edelman’s No Future, and Bersani/Phillips’ Intimacies.

This reveals the depth and intellect of the man and the importance of scholarly theoretical development in the existence of Treasure Island Media. My students will be very familiar with Foucault's three volumes of Sexuality and (if they did well in my first assignment), also Lee Edelman's text which influenced my own writing on bareback sex. Finally, Bersani and Phillips' although less familiar to my students, is of course, an important text. It's striking that the very ideas that flow through an English undergraduate law degree module ('class') are also the ideas that powerfully influence Treasure Island Media.

Paradigm Shifts, Head Fucks and the Ivory Tower

I seem to be in a funny mood today which started last night. I have suffered bouts of depression since being a teen and I think I'm in one my minor doldrums (which usually last a week, as opposed to major episodes which come along every couple of years and last a couple of months or longer) so bear with me if I seem particularly peculiar in the next few posts! You'll see why I'm sharing this in a bit...

Anyway, I kicked off the day with a read of Jane Fae's blog and a really thought provoking post (more so than normal) entitled 'Paradigm shift (and other words that hurt!)'.

Jane asks the question 'What IS it with a certain sort of feminist argument that does my head in so?' and although this is then largely discussed through the prism of Jane's own transition, it has wider applicability. Towards the end of the post, Jane touches more explicitly upon academic language, writing:

'I remember, though, even after I’d written extensively about sex and sexuality being invited to speak at an academic conference on the subject – and having my mind well and truly blown by the way people talked about ordinary easy topics. Words like “discourse” and “paradigm” just flowed and it all felt so easy to parody or mock'.

Given I use both terms (more so discourse) in teaching, writing and conference presentations, I realise I'm one of these mind-blowing (write your own joke) folks. As an academic, we increasingly use complex language to explore and explain the debates (and discourses) we seek to consider. Words are our tools and we always want the latest and shiniest. Just like a mechanic or a doctor we are happy with our own specialist language.

Yet, when our car breaks down we like the mechanic who is an expert but who can explain the problem to us in human language, and similarly when we or a loved one falls ill we want a doctor who can explain the situation without us needing to reach for biology or Latin textbooks. In this respect, academics are often useless, and those academics who work in sexuality are, it seems to me, particularly guilty in this regard.

Driven by theory - such as the feminism Jane notes - we are trapped in a language that is not readily comprehended. We privilege that language and in doing so, we can often create the impression of a loss of emotion. Brooke Magnanti has written an excellent (and accessible) piece entitled 'The Irrationality of the Anti-Sex Lobby' in which she argues for the importance of emotion in policy debates, and the failure of many pro-sex academics to use the tool of emotion.

I've previously written (apologies, it's an academic article), about the way academics often create de-sexed identities in the arena of sexuality studies today in contrast to personal and open narratives of the 1960s, 1970s and to a lesser extent, 80s. Taken together, these ideas form a response to the concerns that Jane expresses.

Whether we are stood in a valley looking at a town, or looking at the same town from the top of a mountain, we are looking at the same thing, but what we see is radically different. Where we are coming from influences in the most profound way, what we can see and conclude.

In place of the mind-fucks that academics often appear to be engaged in, or the over-simplistic and trite press releases that universities push out, academics can engage with their audience, they can be open and forthcoming about who they are and where they come from - as I did in a very small way at the start of this blog - and in doing so re-engage with the notion that academics do not randomly write on areas, we choose areas that we are passionate about and that passion is influenced by our own emotional lives. In framing it in such a way, we can also use the language of the personal, addressing both the points that Magnanti and I have raised. It also enables us to cut through some of the impenetrable language we sometimes resort to, and present our ideas beyond the Ivory Tower - that is to say, beyond the closed community of academics.

This blog is my ever evolving attempt to engage a wider audience of students, academics, activists and anyone touched by law and sexuality - which of course is anyone. I don't always get it right, as in the case of this bareback group (warning very NSFW explicit image at the top of the link) who thought I was coming from a position of criticism rather than support. Even the zine pieces I've written have been viewed by some as evidencing the 'out of touch' nature of academia. Yet, these criticisms have always been outweighed by the messages and emails of kindness and support, of people who welcome this wider engagement.

What happened there then?

Oh dear, what a crazy few weeks. First, I was whacked by this flu-like big that seems to be going around, then I revered enough to go to the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Annual Conference, and then the Association of Law Teachers (ALT) Annual Conference, and now I'm home, once again struck down by the dreaded lurgy. My immune system appears to have taken a holiday. Anyway, I thought it time I added a few brief posts, so whilst the Paracetamol appears to have kicked in, that's what I'll do.

So, a quick re-cap of my little jaunt to Brighton and the SLSA. I have (amazingly) never been to Brighton before, but I fell instantly in love with the city. The conference went brilliantly well. I should declare that I'm on the executive of the association and organise the gender, sexuality and law stream so you might well think "he would say it went well". Well, it did. As fellow academic, John Flood, noted on his blog, the building we were based in had these crazy automatic (and noisy) windows that randomly opened and shut - supposedly when the temperature was at a certain level. It was a regular indicator that quite literally, two much hot air had been generated.

As the GSL stream was once again full (yey), I didn't get chance to visit the other streams but it was a nice opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues, and I left feeling v.perky. It was brilliant to see so many early career academics in my stream, suggesting a really positive future for GSL scholarship.

One trend caught my eye; references to Hannah Arendt. When I attended my first SLSA conference back in 2002, I was struck by the constant references to Foucault. It seemed as though you couldn't do a paper (in any subject) without name checking the great man (something I can't help thinking he'd find ironic).

As time has trickled on, references remain but it's become a little more balanced and Butler probably features just as much in GSL scholarship. Yet this year, Hannah Arendt, the twentieth century theorist, appeared to be getting cited in several papers (something I'd never seen before). She's also cropping up int he work of some folks I talk to on Twitter, especially Gary McLachlan, whose blog you'll find here.

Marco Goldoni and Christopher McCorkindale are also publishing a book entitled Hannah Arendt and the Law later this year, with Hart Publishing. More info on that can be viewed here.

It's too early to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if we are about to see the domination of scholarship by Arendt. You heard it first here.

If Michael Warner & Antonin Scalia Had A Chat About Marriage, What Would They Say?

I'm loving these videos being posted on the Columbia Law School, Gender, Sexuality and Law blog from graduate students. I'm going to try replicating the exercise with my undergraduate law and sexuality students next week. Check out Columbia's latest video here.

Angry Birds

Suzanne Moore has a piece in the Guardian today in which she laments the passing of some of the great feminists and provides something of a 'call to arms' for feminists: 'God, how I miss those troublesome women like Andrea Dworkin and Shulamith Firestone. They may have been as batty as hell but they had passion. And balls. They were properly furious at the horrible things men do to women. Who in their right mind, male or female, isn't?'

Whilst Andrea Dworkin was never the type of person I would have found total agreement with, I admire anyone who passionately argues for their beliefs and doesn't give in the first sign of prejudice and resistance. Moore's central argument about the tension within feminism is an interesting one. There remains little public commentary on the tensions within this theoretical framework -and an all too casual application of the label 'feminist' to cover a group of people with many opposing beliefs. Moore describes this tension in the following terms:

'It is as though feminism had to sex itself up to keep itself interesting. We are not hairy man-haters who bang on about domestic violence and abuse. We are fascinating women interested in fashion, relationships and true intimacy. OK, so we have a few little problems like having it all turning into doing it all, and finding a nice guy to do any of it with at all, but look on the bright side! We have got a few more female MPs, our girls are doing well at school and isn't life grand?'

The full piece is well worth reading, and you can do that here.

Mad For Foucault: Interview With Lynne Huffer

Ben Myers and Desiree Rowe, Assistant professors at the University of South Carolina, Upstate, have a fabulous website: The Critical Lede which they describe as 'Your resource for keeping plugged in to the qualitative communication research community'. They've produced a series of podcasts and their latest is an interview with Lynne Huffer, author of Mad for Foucault, published by Columbia University Press and already sat happily on the shelf beside me. It's well worth a listen.

You can listen to the interview here.

Suicide, Slow Death and the View From the the Ivory Tower

Thanks to Jeron for flagging this rather interesting piece by Jasbir Puar. Puar is a Prof of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University in the US and this piece was pitched as a keynote lecture delivered at Rutgers. As you might expect from someone of Puar's standing, it makes a number of valid points but it's a little bit too pretentious for my taste.

Puar's racial privilege analysis has been previously stated and remains engaging but she does little to develop it here. Her attempt to offer a perspective on the recent US teen suicides is welcome but I'm not a fan of this overly dense style of writing/speaking and I'm not convinced by her "slow death" argument (or rather its application to the Clementi case) . All of the facts of the Clementi case remain unknown or uncertain - a point Puar neglects to mention. We will never truly know what was going on in Clementi's head (despite the trawl of Internet postings he made prior to his death) and this may have been as much about embarrassment - the social construction of the sexual act - as it was about 'sexuality', the outing of self as a sexual category.

If I were to indulge in this academic conjecture, this is more about public vs private constructions of sexual(ity). For example (and I was talking about this in a class this week), the celebration of the heterosexual pregnancy is to to avoid the sexual. At the heart of pregnancy is the penetrative sexual act - or in IVF cases - a man wanking into a jar. The 'dirty' act of sex is forgotten in place of the 'respectable' status of pregnancy. So too have homosexual legal advances been about forgetting sex - they are about 'rights' for an 'identity' and sex is removed from that discourse.

Thus, the exposure of a sexual act in this 'public' way via a webcam was to reveal the private sexual self (regardless of 'sexuality') and that may have been the trauma, as much as the revelation of a homosexual self. DIY porn in contrast is about producing a performance of self - the moving of a camera, the editing, the knowing look into a camera. It is an illusion of the private. Thus, with regard to Clementi, I think the "slow death" argument advanced by Puar is to get stuck in the wrong groove.

That said, this argument of "slow death" may have wider applicability - and may indeed be an appropriate analysis of other scenarios but we ought to look at each teen suicide as an individual tragedy and try to avoid seeking to homogenise them into one simple academic analysis.

More generally, a number of minor errors bug me in the Puar piece. We have 'Grinder' instead of 'Grindr'. We get FaceBook' instead of 'Facebook'. It feels like an academic aware of technology and what technology is supposed to be doing, but they are experiences being viewed from an ivory tower. When Puar mentions DIY porn, it is like an ancient anthropologist describing the savagery of a distant land. I may of course being horribly unfair - Puar may simply have lousy dictation software.

Check out the full piece here.

Barebacking and the ‘Cult of Violence’: Queering the Criminal Law

I'm gradually going to upload my stuff on here so that those of you who don't have access via the various journal subscriptions can view some of my recent work. This is a piece that was published earlier in the Summer and I've talked about this area of my work several times on this blog. As ever, all comments are appreciated.

Jcla.74.4.339

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