Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender 2009 Abstracts
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Interest Group
Straight-for-pay: Performativity and sexuality on Seancody.com • Todd Harper, Ohio University • Popular gay porn website Seancody.com centers around a particular draw: the attraction of watching straight men perform gay sex acts. Drawing on performativity literature — particularly Escoffier’s (2003) discussion of gay-for-pay in porn work — this research examines the content on Seancody.com in the context of sexuality performance. The analysis suggests that Seancody’s content produces a potentially damaging rhetoric where the heterosexual male body is the focus of sexual power, rather than the gay male body.
The Politics of Visibility: Negotiations of Femininity and Sexuality on “The L-Word” Rebecca • Kern, Manhattan College • The visibility of sexual identities is far more than political; it defines subcultural groups and promotes cultural validation. This paper examines issues of sexual visibility and representation of queer-identified women on The L-Word, and the negotiation of these representations in reference to L-Word viewers’ sexual own identifications. In the end, construction of these identities continue to uphold the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy, and privilege norms appropriate to each side of the dichotomy.
An analysis of factors affecting attitudes toward same-sex marriage: Do the media matter? • Tien-Tsung Lee, University of Kansas; Gary Hicks, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • Using a recent survey of more than 5,000 American consumers, this study examines connections between attitudes toward same-sex marriage and media consumption. A positive attitude is predicted by being liberal and less religious, supporting gender and racial equality, willing to try anything once, considering TV the primary form of entertainment, watching political talk shows, and reading blogs. The theoretical/methodological contributions and real world implications of these findings are discussed.
But Are We Free (to Be You and Me)? Meanings of citizenship in gay tourism advertising • Byron Lee, Temple University • In 2003, the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation released a new advertising campaign targeting the LGBT community. This paper will consider the advertisements of the Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay campaign, questioning how non-heterosexuality is represented; first in terms of the symbols and images that convey non-heterosexuality, and second, in consideration of how gay tourism campaigns position queer individuals as citizens in the US.
Print friendly
