Homosexual Identity

Term Paper # 99579

Gender and Sexuality > Homosexuality
Gender and Sexuality > Sexual Politics

A review of the development of homosexual identity and the queer theory.

2,574 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2007 | United States

Published on: Nov 14, 2007

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the development of homosexual identity from a discursive perspective. It pays particular attention to the contemporary effects that queer theory has on the destabilization of homosexual and gender identity. In order to accomplish this, the paper first discusses the origin of the idea of the homosexual as a separate species, distinct from heterosexual individuals. The paper finally suggests some possibilities about the future of sexual identity.

From the Paper:

"The origins of homosexual identity lie in modern socio-cultural and historical construction. Foucault and other theorists have shown identity, even homosexual identity, to be the result of social and cultural forces, not biological or natural ones. As a result, the origins of any identity can be traced to an historical origin point. For homosexual identity, modern attitudes about the speciation of homosexual developed in earnest in the late 19th century in the West and have come to dominate the subsequent century with regard to sexual identity construction. The relatively recent creation of queer theory has revealed the constructed nature of sexual and gender identities. Queer theory provides theorists, and even laypeople, with the understanding that identity is not the immutable natural item we generally assume it to be. Instead, the destabilizing effects of queer theory unmask gender identity for what it is, a social construction still undergoing social change."

Sample of Sources Used:

Bech, Henning. When Men Meet: Homosexuality and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.
Essing, Laurie. "Publicly Queer: Representations of Queer Subjects and Subjectivities in the Absence of Identity." In Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Grobachev. London: Duke University Press, 1999.
Evans, Caroline and Gamman, Lorraine. "The Gaze Revisited, or Reviewing Queer Viewing." In A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Popular Culture. Eds. P. Burston and Colin Richardson. London: Rutledge, 1995.
Quin, James. "Pornography, Primitives, and Postsocialist Slovakia." In Changed in the Heart of Europe: Recent Ethnographies of Czechs, Slovaks, Roma, and Serbs. Eds. Timothy McCajor Hall and Rosie Read. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verky, 2006.
Spargo, Tamsin. Foucault and Queer Theory. London: Icon Books, 1999.