The Ordinary Misalignment of Behavior & Identity: Towards a Theory of Contextual Queerness

• In Event: Methods and Theory in the Sociology of Sexualities

Abstract

This paper develops a theory of "contextual queerness" to explain why gendered and sexual behaviors so often fail to align with stable identity categories. Drawing on interviews with formerly incarcerated people in Texas, I show that queer practices of intimacy, gendered roles, and affective attachments frequently emerge among people who identify as straight and do not necessarily articulate these experiences as transgressive or identity-altering. Rather than treating such misalignments as exceptions or signs of misunderstood desire, I argue that they indicate how sexuality is structured by institutional conditions that reshape relational possibilities. The prison intensifies dynamics present across social life: constraint, surveillance, and material need reorganize how people relate, desire, and present themselves. By foregrounding institutions rather than identities, this paper challenges queer exceptionalism in gender theory and shows how behavioral fluidity is a routine feature of social worlds where gender and sexuality are tightly regulated.

Author

• Dorothy Rau, University of Texas-Austin