“All human beings have the potential for same-sex desire or for sexual activity that does not fit a heterosexual framework”.
What is queer studies?
Queer studies, sexual diversity studies, or LGBT studies is the study of issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender dysphoria, asexual, queer, questioning, intersex people and cultures.
Queer theory is often used to designate the combined area of gay and lesbian studies, together with the theoretical and critical writings about all modes of variance—such as cross dressing, bisexuality, and transsexuality— from society’s normative model of sexual identity, orientation, and activities. The term “queer” was originally derogatory, used to stigmatize male and female same-sex love as deviant and unnatural; since the early 1990s, however, it has been adopted by gays and lesbians themselves as a noninvidious term to identify a way of life and an area for scholarly inquiry. See Teresa de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, 1991; and Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction, 1996.
Queer refers to writings that question the socially accepted heteronormative (straight) identities involving gender and sexuality. The word ‘queer’ has been seen as an attempt to re-appropriate the word from its use in a homophobic manner. Even though the word ‘queer’ has been a word of oppression, it has now become a word of social change to show how the heterosexists are quick to label and judge “the other” and therefore should not be allowed to define the ‘queer’ experience as the true concept of queerness accepts sexual identity as fluid.
Notable Theorist
Michael Foucault
Michel Foucault defined sex, gender, and sexual difference as products derived from society and not natural as they were never giving meaning until society dictated what is normative and therefore socially accepted in the mass populous.
Judith Butler
Judith Butler argued that gender and sexuality are social and performed roles derived from culture and media. She coined the phrase, “gender trouble” to challenge the exaggerated ideals of masculinity and femininity and the perception that only heterosexuality or heteronormativity is or should be the norm.
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There is even a TV series based on Queer Studies. Queer Eye is an American reality television series, initially released on February 7, 2018, on Netflix. It is a reboot of the Bravo eponymous series, featuring a new "Fab Five": Antoni Porowski, food and wine expert; Tan France, fashion expert; Karamo Brown, culture expert; Bobby Berk, design expert; and Jonathan Van Ness, grooming expert. The award-winning show is known for its strong representation amongst the LGBT community and communities that include people of color.
Feminism Criticism
“ Feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature (or artifacts, cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political social and psychological oppression of women”.
What is feminism?
The term “Feminism” originates from the Latin word “Femina” meaning “woman”, thereby referring to the advocacy of women’s rights seeking to remove restrictions that discriminate against women. It essentially relates to the belief that women are equal power holders, and therefore it stands against any form of discrimination or subjugation that women face.
The construct of patriarchal society has deemed women as the inferior gender. In literature feminist theory searches for where the texts perpetuates the power-struggle of patriarchy’s sexists ideal: the belief that women are man’s “other” to which women have been defined by their inadequacy in comparison to men. Even more so feminist theory seeks to discover where the patriarchal ideology that women can only have two identities: Madonna (virgin) or whore is either reinforced or broken.
The 18th Century writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. In her A Vindication of the Rights of Women(1792), Wollstonecraft rejected the established view that women are naturally weaker or inferior to men.
The unequal nature of gender relations, she proposed, was because the lack of education kept the women in a secondary position. She further proposed that women must be treated as equals because they play a crucial role in society. Women themselves should strive to become ‘companions’ rather than mere wives to their husbands.
In the 20th century novelist Virginia Woolf provided the first critiques antly that we can recognize as marking feminism as we know it today. In works like A Room of One’s Own(1929) and Three Guineas(1938), Woolf explored gender relations. One of the first writers to develop a woman-centric notion of reading and education, she argued that the patriarchal education system and reading practices prevent women readers from reading as women. They are constantly trained to read from the men’s point of view. Woolf also argued that authorship itself is gendered. The language available to the women is patriarchal.
Cotemporary social views of gender owe much to critiques of patriarchy in the words of Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir argued in her most famous work, The Second Sex that men are able to mystify women. This mystification and stereotyping instrumental in creating patriarchy. She argued that women, in turn, accepted this stereotype, and were thus instruments of their own oppression. In fact, women are measured by the standard of men and found ‘inferior’. This is the process of othering where women will always be seen, not as independent or unique but as a flawed version of the male. Men and women are, therefore, constantly engaged in this subject- other relationships where the man is the subject and the woman the other.
Notable Theorist
Kate Millet
Kate Millet argued gender is socially constructed as it is performed, taught and reinforced into the concepts of masculinity and femininity.
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir argued men are considered essential subjects (independent selves with free will), while women are considered contingent beings (dependent beings controlled by circumstances).
Marxist criticism
“Marxist analysis of human events and productions focus on relationships among socioeconomic classes, both within a society and among societies, and it explains all human activities in terms of distribution and dynamics of economic power ”.
What is marxism?
Marxism is the belief that every ill of the world (racism, consumerism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia, feminism, religion, patriotism, etc.) is due to class barriers between the haves and the have nots: the bourgeoisie – those who control the world’s natural, economic, and human resources and the proletariat – the majority of the global population who live in substandard conditions and perform the manual labor. The world is in a state of wealthy vs. poverty, survival of the fittest. Marxism is a political and economic theory and philosophy that analyzes the present (why the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich) and predicts where society is headed and it calls for a revolution in order to create a new society.
Marxist criticism, in its diverse forms, grounds its theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820–95) and especially on the following claims:
The changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods.
Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society.
Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology.
Notable Theorist
Karl Marx
Karl Marx created this understanding of texts produced by cultures with the focus on how does the text reinforce or resist (or both) the capitalist “material conditions” of the time of its writing or how does the character/s do that within the story promoting a Marxist agenda to the outside reader. Marx tried to expose the elitist forces at work that keep the lower people from igniting a revolution of change for which has yet to happen.
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