Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I examine everyday heteronormative practices in Midwest college classrooms, using script theory, Foucault’s concept of power/discourse, and Butler’s performativity. I argue that, through cultural and interpersonal scripts, interpersonal interaction and discourse are constituted, which makes the process of “othering” queer students and practices inevitable. However, according to script theory, there may be a partial “re-writing” even as “actors” play out their scripts. Using an autoethnography, I explore how the principles of critical pedagogy may be employed to assist in “re-writing” some of these hegemonic scripts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Is the tango “forever macho,” as has traditionally been suggested? This article unveils a notorious gender ambiguity in the tango culture, anxiously covered up by a practice that dramatizes the binarism of heterosexuality in an almost parodic way. The performative construction of gender roles during the formation of modern Argentina (1920-50) was promoted by an active interaction between the culture industry and its audiences/ consumers. This exchange reflected the need in the public sphere for the creation of a modern feminine identity remarkably documented in the performativity of "public" women, for the purposes of this paper, women tango singers.

These performers, who became a raging success in the stages of commercial theaters, the cabaret scene and the radio and film industries were able to achieve the impossible: while singing mostly male-authored lyrics which delivered a message of control over modern women’s independence, the public availability of their performing bodies which interacted mainly with female audiences, contradicted the representation of abjection, prostitution and destruction suffered by the women of the tangos they sang. In addition, the artistic personas of these female performers--the arrabalera:, the tough yet glamorous woman of the suburbs who had learnt to deal with modern life and men, and who many times cross dressed in order to be allowed into a male-dominated system-- provided a strong vernacular model that was not devoid of gender contradictions. Their defiance to standard canons of female beauty and sexuality was accepted naturally by their audiences, who were pleased to see mimicked on stage forlorn vernacular types: the slick compadrito and the more exotic gaucho style. This embracing of a national popular aesthetic diverted the attention from the mischievous gender play that Argentine audiences would at the time deny as being the reflection of a hidden gender ambiguity. They have become, nevertheless, living documents of a fissure in the heteronormativity of the apparently seamless construction of the modern Argentine nation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines orgasm—and specifically, faking orgasm—as it relates to our cultural mandate for female sexual performance. I interrogate women’s construction of themselves as “on stage” during sex, orgasm as a “gift,” justifications for faking orgasm, and, most centrally, the relationship between sexual identity, heteronormativity, and orgasm.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Judith Butler adds to Gender Trouble, her most famous and important book, the following subtitle: “feminism and the subversion of identity.” This paper will draw from Butler’s works to argue for a politics of subversion, while it simultaneously claims that Butler’s subtitle proves misplaced and ill-conceived. To come to grips with what a politics of subversion might mean, what it might look like, or how it might function will depend, first, on seeing that identity cannot be subverted—and in related fashion, neither can homophobia. I will argue here that to describe a politics of subversion at work in Butler’s writing requires a concomitant redescription of subversion’s critical target: namely, the power of heterosexuality when it operates as a norm. Following the cues of a number of thinkers in queer theory, I choose to call this power heteronormativity. Butler never subverts identity; nor should she. Her radical approach to sex and gender takes shape against the background of her description of the heterosexual matrix; her radical politics emerges from that background.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Summarizes research on and suggests recommendations for working with lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) clients; reviews research on therapists’ clinical competence, bias, and training; research on therapeutic effectiveness and specific techniques used with LGB clients; differences found for therapist-client sexual orientation match; and distinct clinical issues presented by LGB clients.