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The aim of the study is to examine which present conceptions of sexuality there are in treatment of substance abuse for men. The intention is to examine how staff members in these environments perceive clients’ sex and sexuality as well as studying if and in that case how they work with sexuality in treatment. A qualitative method formed the methodological approach and semistructured interviews were carried out for the collection of data. Four staff members from two different treatment institutions for substance abuse were interviewed. To analyse the material constructionist theory and queer theory were used in relation to heteronormativity, sexuality and sex/gender. The analysis shows that sexuality was perceived as being in relation to addiction and problems which affects how the work with sexuality was carried out in the institutions. Among the staff members there are insecurity in how to work with and approach sexuality. However, preventing relationships was described as the main objective when working with sexuality. The clients’ sexuality was constructed based on sex and substance abuse. Furthermore heterosexuality was described by the staff as a homogeneus and normative group while homosexuality was described and perceived as problematic. Finally, homosexuality was regarded as a sexual identity while heterosexuality was not, which as a consequence maintains heterosexuality as the norm and starting point in treatments of substance abuse.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur olika yrkeskategorier inom äldreomsorgen arbetar med HBTQ-frågor. Studien baseras på kvalitativa intervjuer och inkluderar fem informanter med olika arbetsuppgifter inom äldreomsorgen. Resultaten från intervjuerna har analyserats utifrån olika teman i en intervjuguide, med hjälp av queerteorin. Intervjuernas resultat visar att HBTQ-frågor inte blir belysta som enskilda frågor, men skulle vid behov kunna diskuteras under mångfalds- och jämlikhetsfrågor. Informanterna beskrev vikten av ett gott bemötande, oavsett vilken läggning brukaren hade. Samtliga informanter hade uppmärksammat en avsexualisering av äldre individer. De beskrev även ett antagande om att fyrtiotalister kommer att vara en generation med högre krav på att kunna vara öppen med sin sexuella läggning. Studien visar även att samtliga yrkeskategorier upplever att det i framtiden kommer finnas behov av att belysa HBTQ-frågan, samt att implementera denna i utbildningar såsom i nuvarande undersköterskeutbildningen. / The purpose of this study is to investigate how various professionals in eldercare are working with LGBT issues. The study is based on qualitative interviews and includes five informants with different tasks in eldercare. Interview results were analyzed based on various themes in an interview guide, using queer theory. The results show that LGBT issues are not illuminated as individual issues, but could if necessary be discussed in diversity and equality issues. The informants described the importance of good treatment, no matter what sexual orientation the patient had. All informants had noticed a desexualization of older individuals. They also described an assumption that people born in the 1940´s will be a generation with higher requirements to be able to be open with their sexual orientation. The study also shows that all professions are experiencing that, in the future, there will be a need to lift the LGBT issue and to implement it in education programs.

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Media shapes and supports certain ideas about how we view ourselves and others. The narratives that we consume train us to desire a particular formula of what critic Lauren Berlant calls "the good life": growing up, becoming a man or a woman, getting married, having children, and retiring. People who fail to fit into these narratives are often punished and excluded from society. However, queer theorist Jack Halberstam asks us to reconsider failure as a means of resistance. The texts that I examine fail to conform to narrative expectations or to fit formulae that are easily consumable or defined. They present queer characters and relationships that exceed social norms and generic conventions. These characters and relationships encourage us to reconsider the models of desire given to us, and to embrace a more nebulous state of anxiety found in liminal space. In Chapter 1, I discuss Argentine-Spanish-French film XXY (2007), which follows the story of Alex, an intersex teen who refuses to fit within the binary of male or female. In Chapter 2, I argue that Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) lays the groundwork for the visual representation of anxiety and desire in the Japanese manga Aku no Hana (Flowers of Evil ), which explores non-monogamous relationships structured around sadistic voyeurism. In the conclusion I turn briefly to children's cartoons Steven Universe and Adventure Time, in which failure has been reimagined as queer utopia. By focusing on media that resist heteronormative conventions we can start to reimagine models for more empathetic and compassionate communities.

Roman Comedy is defined by the tensions between comic convention and humour’s ability to interrogate societal norms. The playwrights, Plautus and Terence, experimented with their generic restrictions to create unique and complexly structured plays that posed questions on personal and collective identity. This study identifies a critical framework of gender manipulation that shows how citizen men of comic plays transgressed traditional norms of masculinity on a relational, physical, and structural level. It is grounded on the idea that gender plays an integral role in constructing the self. Once characters transgress their gender, other aspects of their identity adjust accordingly until they assume a new social and comic role. I divide my analysis into three character studies from Plautus’ Menaechmi, Terence’s Eunuchus, and Plautus’ Casina. I argue that both playwrights follow the same pattern, where a citizen man performs a physical act of gender transgression in response to dissatisfaction with his emasculating relationship with a female counterpart. This act reveals tensions pertaining to cultural dissonance and citizenship, sexuality in the transition to adulthood, and the crisis of old age. It is followed by a structural manipulation that shifts character and narrative tropes to bring the play to some resolution. This study provides a new framework for investigating the relationship between character and narrative, as well as generic convention and comic subversion in Roman Comedy. It diverges from recent scholarship on comic gender roles to reveal the distinct ways that Plautus and Terence experimented with the patriarchal constructions of masculinity and femininity in addition to the binarism of gender. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In the comic plays of 3rd- and 2nd-century BCE Rome, gender played an important role in the way that citizen men interacted with the world around them. This study identifies a pattern tracing how they were motivated to step outside the norms of traditional masculinity and how this performance affected their identities and plotlines. The pattern comprises three stages: emasculation from an overpowering woman, a physical change of clothes or scent in response to that emasculation, and a plot change to bring the play to a conclusion. The gendered instability experienced by these men at each stage exposes underlying tensions in cultural dissonance and citizenship, the role of sexuality in the transition to adulthood, and the crisis of old age. Investigations of the plays through this pattern reveal how the playwrights experimented with their genre and the impact they had in addressing the on-going concerns of their audiences.

My project explores the role of affective bonds of a sexual, romantic, and/or mentoring nature between male warriors in the production and maintenance of warrior identity during Japan's Warring States (1467–1603) period. Employing the notion of queer reading as a guiding principle, I examine the traces of intimate bonds between male warriors left behind in poetry, love oaths, personal correspondence, and other documents. I argue that male-male warrior intimacy played a central role, often undervalued by historians due to the conventional disciplinary emphasis on male-female marriage, in the construction of warrior retainer bands and the establishment of warrior alliances. Ranging from the purely hierarchical to the overtly sexual, relationships between warrior youths and their relatively older lords reproduced and reinforced warrior identity, through their violent oathing rituals, recreational activities, and function as a site for cultivating future trusted retainers. A young subordinate could also take advantage of the attention and trust given to him by making demands of his ostensible superior, disrupting the power asymmetries of the lord/retainer bond, or even by openly plotting a rebellion In considering warrior intimacy, the project occasions a reevaluation of the unification process that marks the Warring States period’s central narrative. I contend that the conventional interpretation, which relies on the trope of the Three Unifiers, minimizes the influence of male-male ties on events that effected significant historical change at the macro level, including the circumstances that enabled the Tokugawa clan’s ultimate victory, their vision of the social order, and the form of their sacred authority. I also explore the legacy of these bonds in the Edo period (1603–1868), repurposed as ideals of warrior masculinity and loyal retainership by both samurai attempting to find new purpose in a time of peace and commoners enjoying their newfound wealth and leisure time. Each chapter focuses on an influential warlord and his younger retainer: Ōuchi Yoshitaka (1507–1551) and Sue Harukata (1521–1555); Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) and Gensuke (dates unknown); and Date Masamune (1567–1636) and Tadano Sakujūrō Katsuyoshi (dates unknown), respectively.

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This is a discourse analysis of three WebPages which topic is sexual information. Our purpose is to examine the WebPages RFSL (The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights), RFSU (The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education) and UMO (Reception for young people) from a queer theoretical perspective and illustrate how they discuss the subjects’ gender, sexual preference and sexual limits. Our questions are; what information about gender, sexual preference and sexual limits are presented on the WebPages RFSU, RFSL and UMO, and what similarities and differences can be identified and how can these be analyzed from a queer perspective? Our material was collected from the three WebPages and categorized according to three topics of interest; gender, sexual preference and sexual limits. Our analyses are based on queer theory and former research in the field. We found a number of topics and interesting information which were categorized under new headlines. Our conclusion is that the topics mentioned on the WebPages are in most of the cases homogenous. On the theme gender we found that the categories man and woman were prominent. In the discussion about gender we found that all three WebPages only wrote about hetero-, homo- and bisexuality. None of the WebPages write about subjects whom concern the theme sexual limits. All WebPages write about hetero norms and are questioning them.