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This thesis challenges the restrictive definition of ‘gay’ used in legal discourse, argues for the adoption of a broader definition that is inclusive of more gay individuals, and demonstrates that the adoption of a broader definition would help frame gay rights debates in a way that is more acceptable to both progressives and conservatives. Current legal arguments for gay rights use ‘gay’ to refer almost solely to individuals that have exclusively—largely immutable—same-sex erotic desires. However, ‘gay’ should be understood to include a more diverse group of individuals. Thus, the current restrictive use of the term ‘gay’ either captures too many people or too few. Too many people, for conservatives, because gay rights are extended to many gay individuals that are not included in the restrictive definition. Too few people, for progressives, because the restrictive use of the term ‘gay’ doesn’t capture the entire gay community.

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This thesis examines how transnational gay and queer discourses conceal ongoing forms of violence against multiple subaltern populations, through the seemingly natural teleology and progressive nature assigned to gay rights and queerness. I use the theoretical framework of necropolitics, developed by Achille Mbembe who analyzes how power is exercised through killing and death, to examine two sites of violence that are typically presented as progressive: transnational gay rights and queer tourism. First, I demonstrate that the problem of ‘anti-gay’ violence in non-western subaltern contexts is not due to a lack of legal rights, as most western activists have framed the issue, but is rather an issue of non-controlled forms of lateral violence carried out by non-state actors against multiple groups. Second, I reveal that the representation of queer tourism as progressive masks subjection of subaltern labourers to violence and death. These findings suggest that relations of power constituted through necropolitics should be the lens through which violence in subaltern contexts is read. This perspective is in opposition to most western based transnational discourses that misread and disregard forms of violence in subaltern contexts and consequently facilitate the recurrence of violence in these contexts. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-06-21 12:17:17.871

Abstract This dissertation constructs an analytical history of gay theatre in Toronto from 1967 to 1985, a period that saw the radical reformation of the city’s gay community and its not-for-profit theatre industry. It undertakes this research using a cultural materialist theoretical frame that enables it to recover the history of gay theatre in Toronto and connect this history to the contemporary development of gay community and theatrical production in the city. By recovering the history of gay theatre in Toronto, this dissertation demonstrates its seminal importance to the history of gay culture in Canada, and to Canadian theatre history. To construct its narrative of gay theatre history in Toronto, this dissertation focuses on three pioneering gay playwrights, John Herbert, Robert Wallace, and Sky Gilbert, historically contextualizing these within three distinct eras of contemporary gay history and Toronto theatre history. Chapter one addresses the years prior to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969, analyzing the theatrical development of John Herbert’s Fortune and Men’s Eyes, and the political significance of the New York production’s tour to Toronto’s Central Library Theatre in October 1967. Chapter two examines the rise of gay liberation and the Alternative theatre movements, 1969 to 1976, recovering the production history of Robert Wallace’s long-neglected play, No Deposit, No Return. Chapter three investigates the backlash against gay liberation, the consolidation of gay community as a political minority, and the emergence of AIDS, 1977-1985, focusing on the early career of Sky Gilbert, and the significance of his play, Drag Queens on Trial. Paying close attention to the politics of gay identity and community in Toronto, and providing a thick description of the biographical, social, cultural, and political discourses that shaped the lives of these playwrights and impacted the production and reception of their plays, this dissertation reveals the important part gay theatre played in the reformation of Toronto’s gay community and its not-for-profit theatre industry in this foundational period.

M.A. / This study posits that although the South African government has shown an unprecedented commitment to acknowledging and upholding the human rights of lesbians and gay men, negative attitudes exist towards lesbians and gay men in university communities. A survey of 880 heterosexual students (356 men and 524 women) in a university community was conducted using the Attitudes Towards Lesbian and Gay Male Scale (ATLG). The results indicate that heterosexual students have negative attitudes towards lesbians and gay men, that religiosity has an influence on attitudes, that contact with lesbians or gay men reduces negative attitudes, and no differences exist between race groups with regards to attitudes towards lesbians and gay men. Furthermore, South African students at the University of Johannesburg have different attitudes towards lesbians and gay men compared to students at a university in the United States of America. South African heterosexual male students at the University of Johannesburg have more negative attitudes towards lesbians and gay men than students than heterosexual male students at a university in America, whilst South African heterosexual female students have more positive attitudes towards lesbians and gay men than their American counterparts. The results are discussed against the background of previous studies, and suggestions for future research are made. / Prof. G.P. de Bruin Dr. I. van der Merwe

The main theoretical thrust of my project involves the political uses of parodically performing shame and shaming rituals in resisting normative regulation. I argue that parodic performances of this negative affect—traditionally deployed to erase, obscure, and regulate queers—can expose how shame regulates the gender/sexuality performances of straight people as well as queers. I view this project primarily as a tactical shift from the parodic performances outlined by Judith Butler in texts like Gender Trouble, and I feel that the shift is important as a counter measure to increasing homonormative inclusion of (white, middle class) gays and lesbians into straight or neoliberal society. The first section of my thesis is dedicated to exploring theories of homonormativity. I work primarily from Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal, which is a queer polemic, and Lisa Duggan’s The Twilight of Equality, which contextualizes homonormativity in the cultural project of neoliberalism. Homonormativity is, in essence, the opening of cultural space in mainstream society for a certain group of gays and lesbians—those who are “the most assimilated, genderappropriate, politically mainstream portions of the gay population” (Duggan 44). As Warner discusses at length, the shift from queer to conservative gay interests has shifted attention from issues like HIV/AIDS research and physical protection of queers to gay marriage and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which are causes that primarily benefit the gays and lesbians already most assimilated to straight culture. Section II focuses on the work of Judith Butler and other theorizations of parody. Butler’s theory suggests that gender and sexuality consist of a set of continuously repeated performances, and that by performing gender one is constituted as a subject. Butler argues that it is impossible to step outside gender—to stop performing, as it were —because there is no agency prior to the imposition of gender. She locates the only possibility for resistance to gender as a socially regulatory myth structure in the failure to properly perform gender, or in performing in such a way that gender is exposed as always already performative. I have paired Butler’s theory with Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody, which examines the uses, limitations, and value of artistic parody. These two theorists, of course, have different goals, which complicates the potential for combining their work. In the final section I develop my own theory, which largely takes its cue from Butler’s notion that we can resist gender/sexuality regulation through parodic performance. But, whereas Butler argues for parodic performances of gender/sexuality, I suggest the usefulness of parodying shame and shaming rituals. Shame—the social imposition of it, as well as the desire to avoid it—has long been a force maintaining proper behavior in the largest sense, but I am concerned specifically with the regulation of gender and sexual performances. Queers (understood broadly) and women have long been the targets of shame, while straight males have long been the performers of shaming rituals—mockery, brutal laugher, violence. What I suggest is that through an appropriation and parodic reinterpretation of these shaming rituals and shame itself, queers can expose the centrality of shame in repressing not only queer existence and performance, but in restricting the performative possibilities of straight people. This new notion of performative resistance is especially important as some gays and lesbians enter straight society and become subject to its shaming restrictions, but also become complicit in shaming those queers still outside the realm of homonormative possibilities

A contemporary novel spanning thirteen years in the lives of an Indiana family. A boy enters abusive relationships with men in the belief he does not deserve love, a woman abandons her only son because of her alcoholism, a gay father learns to navigate the line between his personal life and that of being a parent. A story in which a family learns to grow, to mature, to forgive their past mistakes and exorcise the demons that haunt them.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Clinical Psychology. Johannesburg, January 1993. / Research has revealed that many gay men continue to participate in high-risk sexual practice them at risk of expoasure to the AIDS viirus. The locus of control construct and the Health Belief Model were employed by this study in an attempt to identify those psychosocial factors which might influence gay men to adopt or neglect health protective behaviour.[Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version]. / AC2017