[Commlist] Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 3.3 published

Intellect is excited to announce that Queer Studies in Media & Popular 
Culture 3.3 is now available!

For more information about the issue, click here >> 
https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=3683/

Content

Judges matter: The courts and culture
Authors: Bruce E. Drushel

Murderbot pronouns: A snapshot of changing gender conventions in the 
United States
Authors: Holly Swyers And Emily Thomas

The ways in which US English speakers use third person personal pronouns 
for agentive beings require gendering the person based on the gender 
binary (he or she). In recent years, activism by transgender and 
non-binary individuals has accelerated a shift in this requirement, 
building on scholarly debate in the 1970s–90s that unseated he as a 
gender-neutral (epicene) pronoun. This has laid the groundwork for the 
gradual acceptance of singular they and the idea of preferred pronouns. 
In 2017, reviewers of the popular novella All Systems Red (Wells) 
addressed the dilemma of choosing an epicene pronoun for a genderless, 
cyborg protagonist called Murderbot. Of 667 reviews collected in 
December 2017 that describe Murderbot, almost 85 per cent attempt to 
respect Murderbot’s pronouns (it, its) despite discomfort with using it 
for agentive beings. This suggests an increase in US public culture 
awareness that the gender binary does not include everyone and may 
warrant optimism for improved conditions for gender non-conforming 
individuals.

‘Darkness Turned into Power’: Drag as resistance in the era of Trumpian 
reversal
Authors: Ella Greenhalgh


In ‘Darkness Turned to Power’ Ella Greenhalgh unearths the role of the 
contemporary drag queen as a force of revitalized queer resistance in 
the United States. Beginning by tracing the political, cultural and 
social impact that Donald Trump’s election campaign and presidency has 
had on queer Americans thus far, Greenhalgh demonstrates that it is 
Trump’s toxic masculinity that creates a context in which drag is more 
obviously defiant. The role of drag as an innately resistive and 
political art form is acknowledged in drag’s long history. However, 
Greenhalgh goes on to portray modern drag as having greater power in 
political activism, with a greater mainstream public interest due, most 
notably, to the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present, US: 
Logo and VH1). Three queens who use their drag to oppose Trump in 
differing ways are considered. She finds resistance emerges through 
direct action, interpretive art and dance, social media presence and 
straight-up mockery. While highlighting that drag is antithetical to the 
conservative world-view that considers binaries fundamental, Greenhalgh 
notes the inherent limitations within drag’s rise to the mainstream, 
concluding that if drag is ‘darkness turned into power’, drag artists 
must use this power to fight inclusively against the common enemy.

  (Trans)gendering public toilets: Queering toilet humour in South 
Park’s ‘The Cissy’
Authors: Andrew Robbins


This article reads South Park’s episode ‘The Cissy’, which aired in 
2014, to consider broader social discourse about gendered public toilet 
segregation in America. A resurgent interest in policing the borders of 
public toilets has led to the development of ‘bathroom bill’ legislation 
in some states. Given the unique challenges that this causes for 
elementary schools, South Park’s take on the practice of gendered 
toileting is deemed a relevant text. This article argues that ‘The 
Cissy’ queers the animation series’ own framework of toilet humour by 
using the toilet and its boundaries as a vehicle through which to 
explicate a position of transgender rights.

Abjection of the bisexual self: How haptic visuality brings internalized 
biphobia to screen in Collard’s Les Nuits fauves and Kechiche’s La Vie 
d’Adèle
Authors: Kirby Childress

Bisexual people often find themselves stranded between a homosexual and 
heterosexual world, which can lead to feeling invisible and alone. To 
add to the struggle, many on both sides criticize bisexuality as being 
merely a phase before coming fully out of the closet. A lack of support 
can cause bisexual people to internalize the negativity and biphobia 
that surrounds them. This article examines how internalized biphobia is 
depicted in the lives of two characters, who never self-identify as 
bisexual, though they engage in both heterosexual and same-sex sexual 
relations. Laura Marks’ idea of haptic visuality is used to dissect 
camera movements and shots, while Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection 
serves as a basis for analysing the differences in portrayal of 
heterosexual and same-sex relationships.

Queer assemblage as queer futurity: Seeking a utopian solution beyond No 
Future
Authors: Keeley B. Gogul

Lee Edelman’s No Future proposes a disavowal of reproductive futurity as 
the only effective form of queer resistance. By contrast, in Cruising 
Utopia Jose Muñoz (2009) insists on the existence of a utopic queer 
future that is always, by default, not yet here. Although both authors 
recognize the Child as symbolic of heteronormative futurity, Muñoz’s 
writings allow room for hope and Edelman’s do not. Importantly, the 
version of reproductive futurity that each posits as operating at the 
structural level is always already normative reproductive futurity. This 
article will analyse the existing structural causes of normativity at 
the level of reproductive futurity and consider whether theorizing 
non-normative reproductive futurity in the form of assemblages makes 
space for the queer future that Edelman claims cannot exist. A 
comparison of Judith Butler’s Antigone and Octavia Butler’s Lilith will 
illustrate the possibilities that exist when queer assemblages are 
deployed in the creation of what Jasbir Puar calls ‘spatial, temporal 
and corporeal convergences, implosions and rearrangements’.

Queer gender performance and media in school: Dissident reading, 
bullying and the word ‘gay’
Authors: Christopher Pullen

This article explores the potential of youth to learn about gender 
performance and sexual identity in school, framing the vulnerability of 
LGBTQ youth and issues of bullying. Exploring the significance of 
‘dissident reading’ as the ability of a student to independently read or 
interpret media representations that may involve an analysis of 
stereotyping and irony, this article foregrounds research from five 
schools in the United Kingdom involving responses from 82 school 
children. Offering both a theoretical examination of dissident reading 
as a process to challenge hierarchies of gender performance and sexual 
identity, and an analysis of the discourse of school children 
themselves, a mixed-methods approach is involved in this research, 
framing limitations in school environments in the education of sexual 
diversity. This article argues that individual teachers have not only 
historically embarked on personal strategies of education outside the 
curriculum on the needs of LGBTQ youth but also that with the 
contemporary rise of populism, there is an increasing need for this.

Reviews
Authors: James M. Elrod And Octavio R. González And Claudia Schippert

The New Gay for Pay: The Sexual Politics of American Television 
Production, Julia Himberg (2017)
 From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender and Gay Male 
Subcultures, Rusty Barrett (2017)
Television Antiheroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, 
Milly Buonanno (ed.) (2017)

Media Reviews
Authors: James Lawrence Slattery And  Alithia Zamantakis

Crashing, Art by Lee Bul, Curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, London: 
Hayward Gallery, 1 June–19 August 2018
The Shape Of Water, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Screenplay By 
Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Ta ylor (2017), Ontario, Canada: Fox 
Searchlight Pictures Inc.

Classic Media Review
Authors: Traci B. Abbott
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