Studiens övergripande syfte är att göra en kvalitativ studie om hur transpersoners livsvillkor påverkas av deras könsidentitet, könsuttryck samt heteronormen. Ytterligare ett syfte var att undersöka hur transpersoner upplever att de blivit bemötta när de passerat som kvinnor och/eller uttryckt en kvinnlig könsidentitet jämfört med när de passerat som män och/eller uttryckt en manlig könsidentitet. Data samlades in genom kvalitativa intervjuer med fem självidentifierade transpersoner, varav tre identifierade sig som MtF (Male to female), en som FtM (Female to male) och en som intergender eller genderqueer. Deltagarna rekryterades med hjälp av Internet samt med hjälp av personliga kontakter. Med utgångspunkt i socialkonstruktivistiska teorier som queerteori har en tematisk analys av insamlad data genomförts, av vilken det framgått att transpersoners livsvillkor i stor utsträckning påverkas av heteronormen samt att de blivit bemötta på mycket olika sätt beroende på om de passerat som män eller kvinnor. Forskning om transpersoner i relation till socialt arbete är i Sverige idag mycket begränsad och denna studie kan på ett småskaligt plan bidra till att fylla det hål som forskning om transpersoner i relation till socialt arbete utgör.

This thesis contributes with a countryside perspective to queer research by highlighting the countryside as a context where queer lives are lived. In the thesis I problematize the city/countryside divide with a view of the concept of queer as dependent on space and time.  The empirical materials are generated through a workshop on queerness, gathering people living within a countryside context; the materials consist of a discussion and written responses to questions on queerness and the city/countryside binary. Theoretically and methodologically, the thesis is inspired by the notion of agential realism (Barad 2007) and situated knowledge, (Haraway 1988); the use of creative writing, inspired by Richardson (1994 and 2000), has also been central to the development of the thesis. The analysis is carried out within themes focusing on conditions for queerness within city/countryside experienced by people situated in the countryside. The analysis shows how space, time, contexts and intersections are entangled and queering the city/countryside divide.

This thesis offers a critical analysis of psychopathological discourses (sexology, psychoanalysis and psychiatry) and feminist writings that contribute to the construction of representations of heterosexual female masochism and submission. Chapter One examines pseudo-scientific ideas about ‘women’ and ‘masochism’ developed in the works of sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. This chapter provides the necessary historical context with which to understand the Anglo-American iterations of discourses of heterosexual female masochism and submission from the 1970s to the present day, which form the case studies in Chapters Two to Four. Chapter Two complexifies and nuances polarised feminist arguments of the 1970s and ’80s (the so-called ‘Sex Wars’) regarding the political status of heterosexual female masochism and submission. This chapter considers the radical and liberal feminist conceptions of fantasy, sexual orientation and sadomasochism (SM), which are examined in relation to two fictional texts: Jenny Diski’s Nothing Natural and Pat Califia’s Macho Sluts. Chapter Three examines the relationship between self-injury and masochism using Steven Shainberg’s film Secretary as a case study. This chapter explores Secretary’s relation to the generic conventions of romantic comedy; demonstrates how the film borrows from normalising and mainstreaming discourses about SM; and finally shows that it engages implicitly and briefly, with notions of SM as a radical challenge to the prevalent cultural narrative of ‘health and harm’. Chapter Four examines the discursive construction of heterosexual female masochism and submission in contemporary sex blogs. This chapter brings together many of the currents that run through the thesis to highlight specific ways that blogging as a medium affects representations of these phenomena. It also examines ways that bloggers have begun to use the medium as a form of ‘confessional’ to co-opt the gay ‘coming out’ narrative for their own ‘kinky’ ends. The thesis concludes by examining some reasons why the complex political position that heterosexual female masochism and submission occupied when they were first coined in Western modernity persists to the present, postmodern day.

The aim of this master’s thesis is to study in what ways an audience who does not identify as heterosexual reflect over the Norwegian TV-show SKAM’s non-heterosexual representations. The research was carried out through five focus group interviews with thirteen people and used theories on identification, stereotypes and the media together with queer theory and intersectional theories. The study’s interviews show that SKAM gives different opportunities for identification. The respondents all identifies with ways the show deals with coming out and how the process is shaped by subtle forms homophobia. The show’s focus on heteronormativity and internalized homophobia is also strongly identified with and considered to be skilfully told. How Isak and Even’s relationship is portrayed is appreciated as well, which was a source for positive identification. The character Eskild was also brought up as a clever way to show how stereotypical representations can be used in a positive and inspiring way. The show’s general lack of non-heterosexual characters and their portrayal as all white, cis, middle class men was critiqued, as well as how the show handled fetishzation of non-heterosexual relationships. It becomes clear from the interviews how the respondents negotiate the non-heterosexual representations in SKAM in order to find identification, which helps them validate their own sexual identities. Moreover, the study also shows how representations, how they affect and regulate people’s social lives and identities, can be better understood by favouring not only the media but the viewers as well.

The knife is a major character in my work. Sections of paper, cut, painted, and bound together form shallow reliefs. In recontextualizing quotidian objects such as fruit, plants, curtains, and shrimp cocktails, they are reconfigured, their original functions replaced with those of physical pleasure and perversion. Caught in private moments of leisure and play, anonymous fetishistic and often mundane subjects pose with theatricality heightened by graphic forms and a high-contrast palette. Strangers exist between actions. Each composition appears to take place before or after an event. Restrained scenes reveal a conservative eroticism. Dark humor and absurdity distill queer images. Themes of control, anxiety, and desire embed within each psychological arrangement. Though based on true stories and real people, the following accounts are fictional, designed to contextualize the aforementioned scenarios.

Denna uppsats undersöker 10 regnbågsbilderböckers gestaltningar av alternativa reproduktionsprocesser och hur dessa representationer förhåller sig till normativa föreställningar om kön och sexualitet. Familjen är ett konstant närvarande element i barnlitteraturen och många människor drömmer om att en dag få bilda en familj. När det kommer till dess reproduktion finns det en uppsjö barnböcker som på ett pedagogiskt sätt förklarar för barn om hur barn blir till. Dessa böcker visar däremot nästan uteslutande det heterosexuella samlaget som det enda sättet att skapa en familj. Idag ses dock en ökning av de så kallade regnbågsböcker där man väljer att fokusera på andra former av familjebildande som alternativ till det heterosexuella samlagets reproduktion. Men hur mycket skiljer sig egentligen dessa regnbågsbildeböcker från de heteronormativa bilderböckerna? Med den heterosexuella matrisen som främsta verktyg undersöker uppsatsen regnbågsbilderböckerna utifrån tre olika kontexter. Med fokus på författarens tilltal, ikonotexten, verkets pedagogiska tendens, samt verkets paratexter når den ett resultat kring huruvida regnbågsbilderböckerna utmanar den heterosexuella normen eller om de kanske till och med i viss mån stärker den.

This essay explores modern queer readings of The Awakening and Ruth Hall, with an emphasis on feeling, time, femininity, and maternity.

This thesis investigates the experiences and strategies of queer migrants seeking asylum in Sweden due to sexuality and/or gender identity. By conducting ethnographic fieldwork and biographical interviews within the RFSL Newcomers support network, the thesis analyses how queer migrants navigate the Swedish asylum apparatus. Building on recent research in queer migration studies, it explores how power relations related to class, gender and race affect queer migrants’ strategies. Applying Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory, the thesis furthermore analyses the queer migrants in an actor network together with RFSL Newcomers and the asylum apparatus as independent actors. This thesis additionally aims to contribute to the sociological debate on categorization and construction of identity using Ian Hacking’s concept of the looping effect. Lack of social capital, of not having the right networks, gendered possibilities of visibility and speaking about sexuality can establish obstacles for queer migrants in the credibility assessment and the success of the asylum claim. The asymmetric power relation forces queer migrants into conflicting strategies. Forced visibility and hyper hiding are strategies that are specifically produced in relation to the asylum apparatus creating gendered risk and precarious living conditions. This thesis concludes that queer migrants and the RFSL Newcomers network, in their asylum activism both challenge the asylum apparatus and Western narratives of LGBTQ identity. Nevertheless, RFSL and the queer migrants become complicit in the production of official essentialistic LGBTQ identities when navigating the asylum apparatus. By exploring the Swedish context of LGBTQ asylum and categorization of LGBTQ identity in the asylum process, this thesis contributes to the somewhat undertheorized field of queer migration in Swedish academia.

In the last twenty-five years there has been a boom in scholarship on Charles Brockden Brown that connects his work to social developments that occurred in the early American republic. Brown scholars often read him as a man ahead of his time as his writing addresses, hints at, or even inverts social mores. The scholarship around Brown's novel Edgar Huntly has concentrated on how the narrative addresses westward expansion and white settlers' relationship with Native Americans or the ways in which Edgar Huntly connects to Revolutionary society. Kate Ward Sugar engages with this narrative in a different way, exploring the dynamic of sleepwalking as a way to address male homosocial bonds. Scholars though continue to side step the eroticism within this narrative and the implications of somnambulism's status as a mental illness being tied to an unnamed desire. My thesis will therefore address this gap in the scholarship by integrating a queer and historicist reading of Edgar Huntly to suggest that Brown's use of sleepwalking is done to reflect a social fear of the homoerotic. It is the goal of my thesis to explore Edgar Huntly as a narrative that weaves the danger of sodomy to sleepwalking, suggesting an implicit relationship between madness, illness, and same-sex desire. In order to fulfill this goal this thesis will employ a queer historicist approach, which aims to engage with the ambiguity of Brown's work to reveal insights into the early American republic. After all as Brown wrote in Edgar Huntly, "There are two modes of drawing forth the secrets of another, by open and direct means and by circuitous and indirect" (4). To develop this paper's argument, I will need to explore the casual relationship between the loss of Waldegrave's letters and Edgar's emotional distress as the cause of his sleepwalking. Brown himself described this as, "...a supposition not to be endured. Yet ominous terrors haunted me", as Edgar's dread is fixated upon the potential of an unauthorized reader seeing these texts (91). Furthermore, close readings of Brown's description of Edgar's fixation on Clithero will highlight his unspeakable desire. This relationship will also allow us to later compare their fates as Clithero becomes, "a madman whose liberty is dangerous, and who requires to be fettered and imprisoned as the most atrocious criminal," while Edgar leaves for Europe with his fiancé (193). Finally, drawing upon medical and legal texts from this period will show how Edgar Huntly suggests a pathologization of sexuality within the time period, in particular the developing figure of a secularized sodomite. This reading of Edgar Huntly not only expands the scholarship on sexuality in Brown's writing, but also the history of sexuality, pointing towards a social development currently unexplored by scholars of the early American republic.

I denna uppsats görs en analys av Jessica Schiefauers roman Pojkarna. Analysen fokuserar på huvudkaraktären Kim och hens identitet, Kims förhållningssätt till det så kallade genuskontraktet samt fjärilens betydelse som symbol för transpersoner. Denna analys görs med hjälp av queer- och genusteorier där namn som Judith Butler, Fanny Ambjörnsson och Yvonne Hirdman är viktiga. Det framkom i analysen av romanen att Kim har svårt att identifiera sig som både flicka och pojke och Kim kommer till sist fram till att hen är en människa; ett tredje kön. Det framkom också tydligt i analysen att fjärilen har en central plats i berättelsen och används både som en symbol för förvandling men också som en symbol för förvandlingen från flicka till pojke, alltså som en symbol för trans.