The word “queer” generates mixed feelings. For some, it is a way to denigrate gays and lesbians, though, in recent years, those in LGBT communities have re-appropriated the term and have given it a more positive spin. This project aims to investigate exactly that kind of social action, specifically, looking at the way some take socially constructed norms and queer them in order to develop new meanings. First, this thesis explores how social norms impacted identity creation in ancient Rome and Greece. It then surveys the theories behind norms, along with their formation and maintenance in current society. Next, this project looks at queer theory and how norms have shaped the ways we build our identities, and vice versa. Finally, this research takes a rhetorical perspective by applying components of the canon to different elements of identity cultivation and presentation, with invention representing the former and delivery the latter.

This thesis aims to explore lesbian desire and sexual identity in Lydia Kwa¡¦s This Place Called Absence, beginning with the textual subversion of heterosexual norm, evolving through the author¡¦s mapping of butch/femme desire and concluding with the protagonist¡¦s formation of self-identity. Chapter One discusses how the text subverts the heterosexual norm through the erotic chaos created by queer characters. I will apply Judith Butler¡¦s notions of heterosexual matrix and gender performativity to look into the textual strategies of subversion. The appropriation of gender is not only a strategy of queer politics, but also the primary means by which lesbians articulate desire. To illuminate Kwa¡¦s mapping of lesbian desire, I apply Teresa de Lauretis¡¦s theory of lesbian fetishism in Chapter Two to examine how butches and femmes in the novel express their desire through manipulating gender signs. The masculinity fetishes are prone to social misunderstanding as penis envy and thereby arouse male hostility. The anxiety of lesbian characters with the paternal phallus will be the focus of the second part of the chapter. Chapter Three looks into how the protagonist establishes positive self-identity through reversing social stigma to empowering self-image in queer coalition. The queer coalition comprising gays and lesbians, nevertheless, cedes its place to equalitarian women¡¦s community at the end of the novel. The problems of the concept of universal women for lesbians will be discussed in the latter part of the chapter from the perspectives of Butler and de Lauretis. After probing into textual details, I will argue that the protagonist, in spite of her desire for female solidarity, ultimately identifies with queer coalition. In conclusion, I will regard the novel as a lesbian counter-discourse by summarizing its strategies of displacement, resignification and reversal of the heterosexual symbolic and foreground the multiplicity of desire and differences among lesbians against the reification of heterosexual symbolic.

The purpose of this study is to explore the manifestations and representations of masculinity and feminity in two novels of Marguerite Duras from a gender studies perspective. We will first review the traditional place of masculine and feminine stereotypes in the phallocentric order, basing our research on Bourdieu’s and Badinter’s work about the role of men and women in our society. Regarding the topic of sexual identity, our theoretical background will include feminist theories as Judith Butler’s gender performativity concept as well as Luce Irigaray’s notion of mimesis. The philosophy part can also give important clues for the interpretation of both male and female sentimental and sexual behavior: the work of the philosopher Michel Onfray, in particular his theory called "solar erotic", will help us to reveal the characteristics of Duras’ erotic writing. The results of our analysis show that both characters in the two novels present an ambiguous sexual identity: they seem to hesitate between the social obligation relative to their gender and the need of acting according to their own nature (androgyny of the Chinese). Our analysis shows the possibility of a deconstruction of the gender as well as a tendency to what Butler calls the subversion of identity. The exploration of Duras’ erotic writing seems to confirm those results, demonstrating the power of feminine desire and sexual pleasure in opposition to masculine sentimental pain and fragility.

The question of what constitutes femininity has been widely debated, not only in gender studies, but also in the broader social world. A venue for this debate is the 1985 documentary, Pumping Iron II: The Women, in which gender and femininity in particular become part of the central plot of the film when Bev Francis, a woman bodybuilder more muscular than any other competitor, enters the competition. While feminist scholars have analyzed gender and sport from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, little attention has been paid to female bodybuilding in particular. To fill this gap, this thesis will examine the ways in which Bev Francis’s portrayal in Pumping Iron II: The Women reinforces and challenges ideas about gender, femininity, and embodiment. In Pumping Iron II: The Women Francis performs gender subversion, actively rebelling against gender norms while the film adheres to rigid definitions of femininity, resulting in her punishment. I seek to understand how female bodybuilding symbolizes larger cultural tensions around feminine gender performativity.

In this study I want to explore and give voice to the lived embodied experiences of women affected by vulvodynia in Italy. Through an autoethnography and two qualitative interviews, I will try to investigate if their embodied experiences question or not the normative construction of female body in Italian context.

In this essay I analyze the ways in which gender and space are shaped and made sense of through digital gameplay. Specifically in the turn based strategy game XCOM: Enemy Within for the MacBook Air with a computer mouse as the primary input device. Using a mixed methods approach consisting of gameplay sessions of XCOM and qualitative interviews with two players regarding their gameplay I argue that earlier research on space within game studies has overlooked the ways in which the shaping of space in gameplay is also gendered. Developing a theoretical framework influenced by gender studies, critical theory, affect theory, assemblage theories of space, and game theory, I argue for how the shaping of space and gender in game-play is interdependent. This in that the shaping of space and gender in digital gameplay is in constant relation and tension with societal norms and the affective capacities of bodies and digital games. In conclusion, I reflect on the possibilities to develop more empirical research based on the the theoretical framework explored in the essay.

The aim of the study is to examine characters in books for children through a gender perspective. Partly I want to examine how female and male gender are constructed, partly how gender norms reproduce and/or challenges. This study proceeds from the following questions: ● How are female and male characters described in the books? ● What actions do female and male characters perform? ● How do the characters act towards characters of the opposite gender? The investigation is based on text analysis and the material consists of seven books for children. The theoretical basis is based on Butlers theory “gender performativity”, Hirdmans gender theory and Nikolajevas scheme of qualities of gender stereotypes. The result showed that the characters often seem to have gender stereotypical qualities. Female characters are more likely to behave as both male and female gender performativity and the male gender performativity and qualities of gender stereotypes are considered more valuable than female. To challenge gender norms we need to study and discuss literature, otherwise the gender norms will be maintained.

Gender presentation, appearing in a way that fits social expectations of one’s gender role, represents one of the most obvious ways in which one’s gender identity becomes salient to others. This quality is especially relevant to note given the continued controversy surrounding children’s gender role development when raised by non-heterosexual parents. The current study is an examination of how gender presentation develops in adopted children with lesbian, gay, and heterosexual parents across two time points (Wave 1: N = 106, Mage = 36.07 months; Wave 2: N = 90, Mage = 8.34). Children’s gender presentation was analyzed using a novel coding scheme, consisting of several variables meant to target the presence of gender typed clothing. These elements of appearance were compared with several measures of child outcomes. It was found that children generally adhere to presentation elements of their assigned gender and there were limited differences by parental sexual orientation in any of the gender presentation variables. Additionally, there was no association found between conformity in gender presentation and children’s self-perception or parent or child gender-typical attitudes. The results of this initial study may prove to be useful in ongoing research surrounding children’s gender typicality.

Esta dissertação propõe investigar, de uma perspectiva etnográfica, os processos de produção e apreensão de noções de feminino nas diferentes práticas que compõem o campo da dança do ventre na cidade de São Paulo, mapeando e descrevendo os principais espaços relacionados à produção e circulação de performatividades de gênero. Tais noções englobam não somente os movimentos inerentes à dança, mas também as concepções de comportamentos e cuidado do corpo que ela circunscreve. Busca-se, assim, verificar quais signos corporais e comportamentais compõem as noções de femininos em circulação e quais agentes e espaços contribuem para sua produção. / This dissertation investigates, from an ethnographic perspective, the production and apprehension processes of notions of femininity in different practices concerning the field of belly dancing in the city of São Paulo. The main spaces related to the production and circulation of such performativity are mapped and described. Those specific notions of femininity include not only the movements inherent to the dance, but also conceptions of behavior and body care that it circumscribes. This research aims to verify which bodily and behavioral signs create the circulating notions of femininity and which agents and spaces contribute to their production.

Once known only as Bodybuilding and Women’s Bodybuilding, the sport has grown to include multiple competition categories that both limit and expand opportunities for female bodybuilders. While the creation of additional categories, such as Fitness, Figure, Bikini, and Physique, appears to make the sport more inclusive to more variations and interpretation of the feminine, muscular physique, it also creates more in-between spaces. This auto ethnographic research explores the ways that multiple female competition categories within the sport of Bodybuilding define, reinforce, and complicate the gendered experiences of female physique athletes, by bringing freak theory into conversation with body categories.