The Queer Logics of Sex/Desire and the ‘Missing’ Discourse of Gender

• In Event: 090 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Gendered Identities

Abstract

In this article I seek to expose the masculinism subtending the queer discourse, specifically that strain of queer known as anti-social queer theory. I argue that anti-social queer theory privileges sexuality at the expense of gender. Moreover and more specifically, anti-social queer theory exalts certain masculine modes of (queer) sexual transgression, which, although concealed through the rhetoric of subversion/transgression, depends on and works to reinforce normative ideologies of gender and sexuality. Thus, I argue that anti-social queer theory reinforces binarized gender, devaluing in turn non-phallic modes of desire. Through in-depth interviews, I show, contra anti-social queer theory, that desire/sexuality is fundamentally dependent on gender and the body more generally. I conclude by arguing that bodily stability and moreover, gender identity formations, are generative of desire.

Author

• Corie Hammers, Macalester College