Media, Information and Technoculture 2200F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Gayle Rubin, Queer Theory
10 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Wrote a groundbreaking essay in sexuality studies: the thinking s ex. Rubin aimed to develop a radical theory of sex to identity, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual oppression. Interested particularly in the kinds of oppression that are suffered by sexual minorities and how are habits of mins and default settings tend to inhibit such a theory. Essentialism: idea that there is an unchanging or natural essence to something. Sexual essentialism: the view that sex (sexual practices, orientations, etc. ) is a natural force that exists prior to social life. Sexual essentialism considers sex to be: (1) individual rather than social, (2) transhistorical and unchanging rather than historically specific and determined. This idea that something is not natural, not biological, not unchanging, but rather collective. Research by historians of sexuality has challenged sexual essentialism by revealing how sexuality changes over time and in different social and cultural contexts.
