Queer TheoryPapers

Sylvia Tamale analyzes how colonial law, organized religion, nationalism, and contemporary politics manufacture supposedly timeless African sexual norms and police nonconforming bodies.

McRuer reads As Good As It Gets to show how queer and disabled characters become resources for a heterosexual protagonist’s transformation - and how able-bodied and heterosexual norms reinforce each other.

This groundbreaking article challenges the fundamental distinction between 'sex' and 'gender' by demonstrating that 'sex' itself is a social construction. Through examining intersexuality and transsexualism as embodied experiences that disrupt binary categories, Hird reveals how medical and social institutions work to maintain artificial divisions. The paper questions whether emphasizing sexual difference or exposing sex as construction better serves feminist goals for social transformation.

This essay analyzes Dorothy Allison's short story collection 'Trash' to explore how 'sexual outlaws' use truth discourse to establish legitimate subject positions within lesbian feminism. Kennedy examines how sexually radical lesbians challenge cultural feminism's normative definitions of lesbian identity and the complex intersections of class, sexuality, and truth.

A groundbreaking 1997 Hypatia paper that first systematically explored intersections between ecofeminism and queer theory, arguing inclusive environmental ethics must account for diversity of species, gender, and sexuality.

Rubin examines sexual hierarchy, moral panic and the distinction between gender and sexuality; this reading also confronts the limits of her treatment of age.

This paper challenges the assumption that heterosexuality is the 'natural' sexual orientation for women, arguing that heterosexuality is a political institution imposed upon women.