Discussion Questions Warner

5 Sex, pleasure and the formation of sexual cultures posed deep challenges to the normative
frameworks by which some kinds of sex are legitimated and instuitutionalized as the proper
form of sexuality
6 Act UP was a shame free organization that was tied to help spread awarenesss of the truth
about aids and to help make life better for people that had aids. They were political and fierce
and angry and started a whole bounch of other groups that fought for queer rights and spread
queer theory. Queer Nation was a more radical organization founded in 1990 by members of Act
UP and they were pissed the fuck off at all of the anti-gay violence. So they got angry and
confrontational. It was pretty militant as opposed to all of the keep your head down and out of
the spotlight groups that kinda didnt get their hands dirty. I like them though because they were
ballsy as fuck.
7 I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn
and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who
has made mistakes and learned from them. I want someone who has committed civil
disobedience. And I want to know why this isnt possible. I want to know why we started
learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a
hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.
*Gosh I just like this piece because WHY DONT WE HAVE SOMEONE LIKE THIS? Why is
it so important that the president be put up on this pedestal that isnt even like anything that
normal people live life like. Why cant my president be a black woman like me who has dealt
with sexual harassment or rape? Why cant my president be queer. Why does my president have
to be like you?*
8 Warner says that Foucault shifted the study of sexuality from identities to techniques by
asking the tough questions. He drew attention to the how secular experts defined sexulaities and

kinda tied modern knowledge of sexualities to politics and stuff and honestly I really dont
understand Foucault but thats probably because I dont own the book yet so I will stop right
now.
9 Okay so I get this, Butler called attention to the way that were pushed into boxes and
organized via sexuality and labels and how we have to identify and have a gender that other
people can see. Bsically like the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence seems to me to
mean that as queer people come out and grow up they are kinda nudged towards filling spaces or
roles defined by non-queers in order to make sense to the heteronormative world
10 Puars impossible transcendent subject is a person/creature/queer that always knows when
there are forces out to make them settle into the norms and always seem ready to fight against
them and point them out even as they subvert them.