Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: LGBTQ
- Creators: Mean, Lindsey
Description
This study situated a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) softball league within the logic of homonormativity and queer futurity and explored how community and identity were constituted, practiced, negotiated, and problematized. The project endeavored to address the questions: What is the meaning and significance of community for the League participants? To what extent and how does participation in the League affect gender and sexual identity discourse and practice? And, in the context of the League, how are dominant ideologies and power structures reinforced, disrupted, and produced? A critical ethnography was undertaken to render lives, relations, structures, and alternative possibilities visible. Data was collected through participant observation, interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and archival document analysis. A three stage process was employed for data transformation including description, analysis, and interpretation. LGBT identified sports clubs, formed as a result of identity politics, are understood to be potential sites of transformation and/or assimilation. Although the League was imbued with the discourses of inclusion and acceptance, the valorizing of competition and normalization led to the creation of hierarchies and a politics of exclusion. The League as an identity-based community was defined by what it was not, by what it lacked, by its constitutive outside. It is possible to learn a great deal about community by looking at what and who is left out and the conspicuous absence of transgender and bisexual participants in the League highlights a form of closure, a limit to the transformative potential of the League.
ContributorsMertel, Sara (Author) / Bortner, Peg (Thesis advisor) / Allison, Maria (Committee member) / Mean, Lindsey (Committee member) / Kivel, Dana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
There has been a recent push for queer fiction, especially in the young adult genre, whose focus is gay and lesbian relationships. This growth is much needed in terms of visibility and the furthering of acceptance, but there are still subjects within the LGBTQ+ community that need to be addressed, including bisexual, asexual, and non-binary erasure. There are many people who claim that these identities do not exist, are labels used as a stepping stone on one's journey to discovering that they are homosexual, or are invented excuses for overtly promiscuous or prudish behavior. The existence of negative stereotypes, particularly those of non-binary individuals, is largely due to a lack of visibility and respectful representation within media and popular culture. However, there is still a dearth of non-binary content in popular literature outside of young adult fiction. Can You See Me? aims to fill the gap in bisexual, asexual, and non-binary representation in adult literature. Each of the four stories that make up this collection deals with an aspect of gender and/or sexuality that has been erased, ignored, or denied visibility in American popular culture. The first story, "We'll Grow Lemon Trees," examines bisexual erasure through the lens of sociolinguistics. A bisexual Romanian woman emigrates to Los Angeles in 1989 and must navigate a new culture, learn new languages, and try to move on from her past life under a dictatorship where speaking up could mean imprisonment or death. The second story "Up, Down, All Around," is about a young genderqueer child and their parents dealing with microaggressions, examining gender norms, and exploring personal identity through imaginary scenarios, each involving an encounter with an unknown entity and a colander. The third story, "Aces High," follows two asexual characters from the day they're born to when they are 28 years old, as they find themselves in pop culture. The two endure identity crises, gender discrimination, erasure, individual obsessions, and prejudice as they learn to accept themselves and embrace who they are. In the fourth and final story, "Mile Marker 72," a gay Mexican man must hide in plain sight as he deals with the death of his partner and coming out to his best friend, whose brother is his partner's murderer.
ContributorsOchser, Jordyn M. (Author) / Bell, Matt (Thesis director) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals experience a variety of types of representation, particularly in media outlets. While the quantity of such representations is steadily increasing, research must continue to examine the content of representations as they become available. This examination is important as much of society is determined by discourses presented in media outlets. Further, media often produces and reproduces dominant narratives about minority groups. Television is one arena where individuals come to learn about themselves and others. Particularly, the sitcom genre can be useful for figuring out how to deal with real-world issues in a humorous and entertaining way. However, the humor of sitcom does not exclude it from the meaning-making and identity-formation systems present in television and media, more broadly. Thus, this study investigates the discourses surrounding LGBTQ+ representation in the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek through critical and rhetorical discursive analyses while also applying principles of queer theory throughout. Results indicate while Schitt’s Creek does many things well in terms of its representation of LGBTQ+ individuals, problematic stereotypes still often remain. In other words, Schitt’s Creek breaks from typical LGBTQ+ representation found in sitcoms, but often still embodies dominant cultural narratives used to degrade, restrict, and punish LGBTQ+ individuals. This is particularly evident as one examines the ways Schitt’s Creek often falls into heteronormative standards and continually polices the sexual nature of LGBTQ+ individuals to display a safe and comfortable version of homosexuality. Therefore, Schitt’s Creek may often and unknowingly reinforce the heteronormative hegemonies it seeks to break from.
ContributorsKiourkas, Steffanie M (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Walker, Michael (Committee member) / Gruber, Diane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023