what-when-how

In Depth Information
Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality in Online
HIV/AIDS Information

Introduction

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome)

represent a growing and significant health threat to women worldwide. According to the United
Nations (UNAIDS/WHO, 2004), women now make up nearly half of all people living with HIV
worldwide. In the United States, although males still accounted for 73% of all AIDS cases
diagnosed in 2003, there is a marked increase in HIV and AIDS diagnoses among females. The
estimated number of AIDS cases increased 15% among females and 1% among males from 1999
through 2003 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). Looking closer at HIV and
AIDS infections among women in the United States, Anderson and Smith (2004) report that HIV
infection was the leading cause of death in 2001 for African-American women aged 25 to 34 years,
and was among the four leading causes of death for African-American women aged 20 to 24 and
35 to 44 years, as well as Hispanic women aged 35 to 44 years. The rate of AIDS diagnoses for
African-American women (50.2 out of 100,000 women) was approximately 25 times the rate for
white women (2 out of 100,000) and 4 times the rate for Hispanic women (12.4 out of 100,000;
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). African-American and Hispanic women together
represented about 25% of all U.S. women (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000), yet they account for 83%
of AIDS diagnoses reported in 2003 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
Women’s vulnerability to HIV and AIDS may be attributed to gender inequalities in
socioeconomic status, stereotypes of AIDS as a gay-male disease, and cultural ideology around
sexual practices such as abstinence, monogamy, and condom use. Because of cultural mores and
socioeconomic disadvantages, women may consequently have less access to prevention and care
resources. Information is perhaps the most important HIV and AIDS resource for women, and the
Internet provides a useful platform for disseminating information to a large cross-section of
women. With the flourishing use of e-health resources and the growing number of public-access
Internet sites, more and more people are using the Internet to obtain health-care information.
Over two thirds of Americans (67%) are now online (Internet World Statistics, 2005). On a typical
day, about 6 million Americans go online for medical advice. This exceeds the number of
Americans who actually visit health professionals (Fox & Rainie, 2002). Studies also show that
women are more likely to seek health information online than are men (Fox & Fallows, 2003; Fox
& Rainie, 2000; Hern, Weitkamp, Hillard, Trigg, & Guard, 1998). HIV and AIDS patients are
among the health-care consumers with chronic medical conditions who increasingly take the
Internet as a major source of information (Kalichman, Weinhardt, Benotsch, & Cherry, 2002).
As more Americans go online for health information, the actual efficacy of the
information consumption becomes salient. Recent digital divide studies call for shifting from
demographic statistics around technological access to socially informed research on effective use
of technology (Gurstein, 2003; Hacker & Mason, 2003; Kvasny & Truex, 2001; Payton, 2003;
Warschauer, 2002). Although the Internet provides a health information dissemination platform
that is continuous, free, and largely anonymous, we should not assume that broader access and
use will be translated into positive benefits. We must begin to critically examine the extent to
which e-health content meets the needs of an increasingly diverse population of Internet users.
To combat the AIDS pandemic, it is necessary to deliver information that is timely, credible,
and multisectoral. It has to reach not just clinicians and scientists, but also behavioral specialists,
policy makers, donors, activists, and industry leaders.
It must also be accessible to affected individuals and communities (Garbus, Peiperl, &
Chatani, 2002). Accessibility for affected individuals and communities would necessitate
targeted, culturally salient, and unbiased information. This is a huge challenge. For instance,
health providers’ insensitivity and biases toward women have been documented in the critical
investigation of TV programs (Myrick, 1999; Raheim, 1996) and printed materials (Charlesworth,
2003). There is a lack of empirical evidence to demonstrate the extent to which and the
conditions by which these biases are reproduced on the Internet. In what follows, we provide a
conceptual framework for uncovering implicit gender biases in HIV and AIDS information. This
framework is informed by the role of power in shaping the social construction of gender and
sexuality. We conclude by describing how the framework can be applied in the analysis of online
HIV and AIDS information resources.

background

Gupta (2000) has explored the determining role of power in gender and sexuality.
Gender, according to Gupta, concerns expectations and norms of appropriate male and female
behaviors, characteristics, and roles shared within a society. It is a social and cultural construct
that differentiates women from men and defines the ways they interact with each other. Distinct
from gender yet intimately linked to it, sexuality is the social construction of a biological drive,
including whom to have sex with, in what ways, why, under what circumstances, and with what
outcomes. Sexuality is influenced by rules, both explicit and implicit, imposed by the social
definition of gender, age, economic status, ethnicity, and so forth (Dixon Mueller, 1993;
Zeidenstein & Moore, 1996).
What is fundamental to both sexuality and gender is power. The unequal power balance
in gender relations that favors men translates into an unequal power balance in heterosexual
interactions. Male pleasure supersedes female pleasure, and men have greater control than
women over when, where, and how sex takes place (Gavey, McPhillips, & Doherty, 2001).
Therefore, gender and sexuality must be understood as constructed by a complex interplay of
social, cultural, and economic forces that determine the distribution of power. As far as HIV and
AIDS, “the imbalance in power between women and men in gender and sexual relations curtails
women’s sexual autonomy and expands male sexual freedom, thereby increasing women’s and
men’s risk and vulnerability to HIV” (Gupta, 2000, p. 2; Heise & Elias, 1995; Weiss & Gupta,
1998).
Based on this feminist approach to theorizing gender and sexuality, Gupta (2000)
categorized HIV and AIDS programs in terms of the degree to which historical power dynamics in
gender and sexuality were maintained. The categories summarized in Table 1 are depicted in
Figure 1 ranging from the most damaging to the most beneficial ones.
In the theory of social construction, HIV and AIDS are represented as a set of social, economic,
and political discourses that are transmitted by media (Cullen, 1998). In symbolic
interactionism’s theory of gender, mediated messages in advertising, TV, movies, and books tell
quite directly how gender is enacted (Ritzer, 1996). As the latest platform for computer-mediated
communication, the Internet may also adhere to these gendered representations. We theorize that
online HIV and AIDS information follows a similar pattern of power reconstruction, and that
these categories could be applied to empirically determine how and why online HIV and AIDS
information reproduces these power relations.

future trends

This theoretical framework could be employed in empirical studies that deconstruct

online materials to demonstrate how HIV and AIDS gain their social meanings at the intersection
of discourses about gender and sexuality. Prior studies in this area have focused on the cultural
analyses of AIDS (Cheng, 2005; Sontag, 1990; Treichler, 1999; Waldby, 1996) rather than
structural determinants of risk such as political policy, globalization, industrialization, and the
economy. Cultural analysis is based upon the belief that this disease operates as an epidemic of
signification based on largely predetermined sexual and gendered conventions. The female has
now become socially constructed as a body under siege in AIDS discourse. This gendered body is
not, however, a stable signifier. Previously, the body was constructed as white, gay, and male.
Now the global discourses on HIV and AIDS have constructed the body as third world,
heterosexual, and female. Thus, we see a feminization of HIV and AIDS.
Analysis of the social construction of AIDS using this framework could occur at different
levels of analysis and with various populations. We conclude with a few examples.
• Garbus et al. (2002) provide a categorization of HIV and AIDS Web sites that could be used
for a cross-category or within-category analysis of the representation of gender and sexuality.
• Cultural ideologies around condom use for AIDS prevention and reproductive health
could be studied.
• Given the wide disparities in HIV and AIDS infections among women in the United
States, research is needed to examine the discursive practices surrounding HIV and AIDS,
socioeconomic status, geographic region, and ethnicity or race.
• The absence of lesbians in the HIV-AIDS and women discourse can be analyzed.
• The social construction of the female body in the HIV and AIDS discourse can be studied.
Table 1. Categories of HIV and AIDS programs based on gender and sexuality
Category Description
The damaging stereotypes of men are reinforced as “predator, violent,
Stereotypical irresponsible” and women as “powerless victims” or “repositories of
infection”.

The target is the general population instead of either gender or sex.

Despite no harm done and “better than nothing”, the different needs of
Neutral
women and men are ignored. Very often the basis is research that only
has been tested on men, or works better for men.

The different needs and constraints of individuals based on their gender

and sexuality are recognized and responded to. One example is to provide
Sensitive female condoms. Thus women’s access to protection, treatment or care
can be improved, but little is done to change the old paradigm of
imbalanced gender power

The aim is to transform gender relations to make them equitable. The

Tranformational major focus is on the redefinition of gender roles at the personal,
relationship, community and societal levels.

Empowering The central idea is to “seek to empower women or free women and men
from the impact of destructive gender and sexual norms”. Women are
 encouraged to take necessary actions at personal as well as community
levels to participate in decision-making. One misunderstanding that needs
to be corrected is that empowering women isn’t equal to disnmpownrinc
men. The fact is more power to women would eventually lead to more
power to both, since empowering women improves households,
communities and entire nations.

Figure 1. Continuum of the social construction of gender and sexuality

• Discursive practices surrounding HIV and AIDS, gender, and development in

developing countries are a potential research subject.
• The tension in the social construction of women as both vulnerable receivers and immoral
transmitters of this deadly disease can be deconstructed.

conclusion

HIV and AIDS are a complex and pressing issue. It is not just an issue of health, but has
also been framed as an issue of personal responsibility, economics, development, and gender
equity. It impacts every nation and individual across the globe. In this article, we argue that the
increasing epidemic of HIV and AIDS among women is also an issue of information. We propose
a framework for unpacking discursive practices that construct women as the new face of HIV and
AIDS. We also provide examples of problem domains in which the feminist analysis informed by
this framework can be conducted.

key terms

Digital Divide: Unequal access to and use of computers and the Internet resulting from such
socioeconomic gaps as income, education, race, and age.
E-Health: The applications of the Internet and global networking technologies to medicine and
public health.
Empowerment Theory: The study of how perceptions of power affect behaviors and how
individuals can increase their power through social interaction.
Feminist Theory: Women-centered theory that treats women as the central subjects, seeks to
see the world from the points of women in the social world, and seeks to produce a better world
for women.
Gender: Expectations and norms of appropriate male and female behaviors, characteristics,
roles, and ways of interaction that are shared within a society.
Sexuality: Social construction of a biological drive, including whom to have sex with, in what
ways, why, under what circumstances, and with what outcomes.
Social Construction of Information: Information is examined not as objective missives, but
rather as data inextricably intertwined with the social settings in which they are encountered.

Queer theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to be confused with Queer studies.

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v·d·e

Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT

studies and feminist studies. It is a kind of interpretation devoted toqueer readings of texts. Heavily

influenced by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler, queer theory builds both

upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies'

close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities. Whereas gay/lesbian

studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behavior with respect to homosexual behavior,

queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls

into normative and deviant categories.

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Queer theory

• 2 Overview

• 3 History

• 4 Background concepts

• 5 Identity politics

• 6 Role of biology

• 7 The HIV/AIDS discourse

• 8 Prostitution, pornography and BDSM

• 9 The role of language

• 10 Media and other creative works

• 11 Criticism
 • 12 Post-Queer Theory

• 13 See also

o 13.1 Theorists

• 14 References

• 15 Further reading

• 16 External links

[edit]Queer theory

"In the late 1960s, closets opened, and gay and lesbian scholars who had up till then remained silent

regarding their sexuality or the presence of homosexual themes in literature began to speak."[1]

"Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in

particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a

positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative".[2]

Queer theorist Michael Warner attempts to provide a definition of a concept that typically circumvents

categorical definitions: "Social reflection carried out in such a manner tends to be creative, fragmentary, and

defensive, and leaves us perpetually at a disadvantage. And it is easy to be misled by the utopian claims

advanced in support of particular tactics. But the range and seriousness of the problems that are continually

raised by queer practice indicate how much work remains to be done. Because the logic of the sexual order

is so deeply embedded by now in an indescribably wide range of social institutions, and is embedded in the

most standard accounts of the world, queer struggles aim not just at toleration or equal status but at

challenging those institutions and accounts. The dawning realization that themes

of homophobia and heterosexism may be read in almost any document of our culture means that we are

only beginning to have an idea of how widespread those institutions and accounts are.[3]

Queer theory's main project is exploring the contesting of the categorization of gender and sexuality;

identities are not fixed – they cannot be categorized and labeled – because identities consist of many varied

components and that to categorize by one characteristic is wrong. For example, a woman can be a woman

without being labeled a lesbian or feminist, and she may have a different racefrom the dominant culture. She

should, queer theorists argue, be classed as possessing an individual identity and not put in the collective

basket of feminists or of colour or the like.[citation needed]

[edit]Overview

Queer theory is derived largely from post-structuralist theory, and deconstruction in particular. Starting in the

1970s, a range of authors brought deconstructionist critical approaches to bear on issues of sexual identity,

and especially on the construction of a normative "straight" ideology. Queer theorists challenged the validity
and consistency of heteronormative discourse, and focused to a large degree on non-heteronormative

sexualities and sexual practices.

The term "queer theory" was introduced in 1990, with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Adrienne

Rich and Diana Fuss (all largely following the work of Michel Foucault) being among its foundational

proponents. Queer theory is not the same as queer activism, although there is overlap.[citation needed]

"Queer" as used within queer theory is less an identity than an embodied critique of identity. Major aspects

of this critique include discussion of: the role of Performativity in creating and maintaining identity; the basis

of sexuality and gender, either as natural, essential, or socially constructed; the way that these identities

change or resist change; and their power relations vis-a-visheteronormativity.

[edit]History

Teresa de Lauretis is the person credited with coining the phrase "Queer Theory". It was at a working

conference on theorizing lesbian and gay sexualities that was held at the University of California,Santa

Cruz in February 1990 that de Lauretis first made mention of the phrase.[4] Barely three years later, she

abandoned the phrase on the grounds that it had been taken over by mainstream forces and institutions it

was originally coined to resist.[5] Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of

the Closet, and David Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexualityinspired countless others' work.

[edit]Background concepts

In many respects, Queer theory is grounded in gender and sexuality. Due to this association, a debate

emerges as to whether sexual orientation is natural or essential to the person, as an essentialistbelieves, or

if sexuality is a social construction and subject to change.[6]

The Essentialist theory was introduced to Queer Criticism as a by-product of feminism when the criticism

was known by most as Lesbian/Gay Criticism. The essentialist feminists believed that genders "have an

essential nature (e.g. nurturing and caring versus being aggressive and selfish), as opposed to differing by a

variety of accidental or contingent features brought about by social forces".[7] Due to this belief in the

essential nature of a person, it is also natural to assume that a person's sexual preference would be natural

and essential to a person’s personality.

Social Constructionists counter that there is no natural identity, that all meaning is constructed through

discourse and there is no subject other than the creation of meaning for social theory. In a Constructionist

perspective, it is not proper to take gay or lesbian as subjects with objective reality; but rather they must be

understood in terms of their social context, in how genealogy creates these terms through history.[citation needed]

For example, as Foucault explains in The History of Sexuality, two hundred years ago there was no linguistic

category for gay male. Instead, the term applied to sex between two men was sodomy. Over time, the
concept "homosexual" was created in a test tube through the discourses of medicine and

especially psychiatry. What is conventionally understood to be the same practice was gradually transformed

from a sinful lifestyle into an issue of sexual orientation. Foucault argues that prior to this discursive creation

there was no such thing as a person who could think of himself as essentially gay.

[edit]Identity politics

Queer theory was originally associated with radical gay politics of ACT UP, OutRage! and other groups

which embraced "queer" as an identity label that pointed to a separatist, non-assimilationistpolitics.[7] Queer

theory developed out of an examination of perceived limitations in the traditional identity politics of

recognition and self-identity. In particular, queer theorists identified processes of consolidation or

stabilization around some other identity labels (e.g. gay and lesbian); and construed queerness so as to

resist this. Queer theory attempts to maintain a critique more than define a specific identity.

Acknowledging the inevitable violence of identity politics, and having no stake in its own ideology, queer is

less an identity than a critique of identity. However, it is in no position to imagine itself outside the circuit of

problems energized by identity politics. Instead of defending itself against those criticisms that its operations

attract, queer allows those criticisms to shape its – for now unimaginable – future directions. "The term,"

writes Butler, "will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which

resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized." The mobilization of queer

foregrounds the conditions of political representation, its intentions and effects, its resistance to and

recovery by the existing networks of power.[8]

[edit]Role of biology

Queer theorists focus on problems in classifying individuals as either male or female, even on a strictly

biological basis. For example, the sex chromosomes (X and Y) may exist in atypical combinations (as

in Klinefelter's syndrome [XXY]). This complicates the use of genotype as a means to define exactly two

distinct sexes. Intersexed individuals may for many different biological reasons have ambiguous sexual

characteristics.

Scientists who have written on the conceptual significance of intersexual individuals include Anne Fausto-

Sterling, Ruth Hubbard, Carol Tavris, and Joan Roughgarden.

Some key experts in the study of culture, such as Barbara Rogoff, argue that the traditional distinction

between biology and culture as independent entities is overly simplistic, pointing to the ways in which

biology and culture interact with one another.[9]

[edit]The HIV/AIDS discourse

Much of queer theory developed out of a response to the AIDS crisis, which promoted a renewal of radical

activism, and the growing homophobia brought about by public responses to AIDS. Queer theory became

occupied in part with what effects – put into circulation around the AIDS epidemic – necessitated and

nurtured new forms of political organization, education and theorizing in "queer".

To examine the effects that HIV/AIDS has on queer theory is to look at the ways in which the status of the

subject or individual is treated in the biomedical discourses that construct them.[10]

1. The shift, affected by safer sex education in emphasizing sexual practices over sexual

identities[11]

2. The persistent misrecognition of HIV/AIDS as a "gay" disease [12]

3. Homosexuality as a kind of fatality[13]

4. The coalition politics of much HIV/AIDS activism that rethinks identity in terms of affinity

rather than essence[14] and therefore includes not only lesbians and gay men but

also bisexuals,transsexuals, sex workers, people with AIDS, health workers, and parents and

friends of gays; the pressing recognition that discourse is not a separate or second-order

"reality"[15]

5. The constant emphasis on contestation in resisting dominant depictions of HIV and AIDS

and representing them otherwise[16][dead link]. The rethinking of traditional understandings of the

workings of power in cross-hatched struggles over epidemiology, scientific research, public health

and immigration policy[17]

The material effects of AIDS contested many cultural assumptions about identity, justice, desire and

knowledge, which some scholars felt challenged the entire system of Western thought,[18] believing it

maintained the health and immunity of epistemology: "the psychic presence of AIDS signifies a collapse of

identity and difference that refuses to be abjected from the systems of self-knowledge."[19]Thus queer theory

and AIDS become interconnected because each is articulated through a postmodernist understanding of the

death of the subject and both understand identity as an ambivalent site.

[edit]Prostitution, pornography and BDSM

Queer theory, unlike most feminist theory and lesbian and gay studies, includes a wide array of non-

normative sexual identities and practices, not all of them non-

heterosexual. Sadomasochism,prostitution, sexual

inversion, transgender, bisexuality, asexuality, intersexuality are seen by queer theorists as opportunities for

more involved investigations into class difference and racial, ethnic and regional particulars.
The key element is that of viewing sexuality as constructed through discourse, with no list or set of

constituted preexisting sexuality realities, but rather identities constructed through discursive operations. It is

important to consider discourse in its broadest sense as shared meaning making, as Foucault and Queer

Theory would take the term to mean. In this way sexual activity, having shared rules and symbols would be

as much a discourse as a conversation, and sexual practice itself constructs its reality rather than reflecting

a putatively proper, biologically predefined sexuality.

This point of view places these theorists in conflict with some branches of feminism that view prostitution,

and pornography, for example, as mechanisms for the oppressions of women. Other branches of feminism

tend to vocally disagree with this interpretation and celebrate (some) pornography as a means of adult

sexual representation.[20]

[edit]The role of language

For language use as associated with sexual identity, see Lavender linguistics.

Queer theory is likened to language because it is never static, but is ever-evolving. Richard Norton suggests

that the existence of queer language is believed to have evolved from the imposing of structures and labels

from an external mainstream culture.[21]

Early discourse of queer theory involved leading theorists: Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky

Sedgwick and others. This discourse centered on the way that knowledge of sexuality was structured

through the use of language. Heteronormativity was the main focus of discourse, where heterosexuality was

viewed as normal and any deviations, such as homosexuality, as abnormal or "queer".

In later years there was an explosion of discourse on sexuality and sexual orientations with the coming-of-

age of the Internet. Prior to this, discourse was controlled by institutional publishing, and with the growth of

the internet and its popularity, the community could have its own discussion on what sexuality and sexual
orientation was. Homosexual and heterosexual were no longer the main topics of

discourse; BDSM, transgender and bisexuality became topics of discourse.[citation needed]

[edit]Media and other creative works

Many queer theorists have produced creative works that reflect theoretical perspectives in a wide variety of

media. For example, science fiction authors such as Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butlerfeature many

values and themes from queer theory in their work. Patrick Califia's published fiction also draws heavily on

concepts and ideas from queer theory. Some lesbian feminist novels written in the years immediately

following Stonewall, such as Lover by Bertha Harris or Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, can be said to

anticipate the terms of later queer theory.

In film, the genre christened by B. Ruby Rich as New Queer Cinema in 1992 continues, as Queer Cinema,

to draw heavily on the prevailing critical climate of queer theory; a good early example of this is the Jean

Genet-inspired movie Poison by the director Todd Haynes. In fan fiction, the genre known as slash

fiction rewrites straight or nonsexual relationships to be gay, bisexual, and queer in a sort of campy cultural

appropriation. Ann Herendeen's Pride/Prejudice,[22] for example, narrates a steamy affair between Mr.

Darcy and Mr. Bingley, the mutually devoted heroes of Jane Austen's much-adapted novel. And in music,

some Queercore groups and zines could be said to reflect the values of queer theory.[23]

Queer theorists analyze texts and challenge the cultural notions of "straight" ideology; that is, does "straight"

imply heterosexuality as normal or is everyone potentially gay? As Ryan states: "It is only the laborious

imprinting of heterosexual norms that cuts away those potentials and manufactures heterosexuality as the

dominant sexual format."[24] For example, Hollywood pursues the "straight" theme as being the dominant

theme to outline what masculine is. This is particularly noticeable in gangster films, action films and

westerns, which never have "weak" (read: homosexual) men playing the heroes, with the recent exception of

the film Brokeback Mountain. Queer theory looks at destabilizing and shifting the boundaries of these

cultural constructions.

New Media artists have a long history of queer theory inspired works, including cyberfeminism works, porn

films like I.K.U. which feature transgender cyborg hunters and "Sharing is Sexy", an "open source porn

laboratory", using social software, creative commons licensing and netporn to explore queer sexualities

beyond the male/female binary.

[edit]Criticism

Typically, critics of queer theory are concerned that the approach obscures or glosses altogether the

material conditions that underpin discourse.[25] Tim Edwards argues that queer theory extrapolates too

broadly from textual analysis in undertaking an examination of the social.[25] Adam Green argues that queer
theory ignores the social and institutional conditions within which lesbians and gays live.[26]

Queer theory's commitment to deconstruction makes it nearly impossible to speak of a "lesbian" or "gay"

subject, since all social categories are denaturalized and reduced to discourse.[27] Thus, queer theory cannot

be a framework for examining selves or subjectivities—including those that accrue by race and class—but

rather, must restrict its analytic focus to discourse.[28] Hence, sociologyand queer theory are regarded as

methodologically and epistemologically incommensurable frameworks [28] by critics such as Adam Green.

Foucault's account of the modern construction of the homosexual, a starting point for much work in Queer

Theory, is itself challenged by Rictor Norton, using the Molly House as one counter-example of a distinctly

homosexual subculture before 1836.[29] He critiques the idea that people distinctly identifying in ways now
associated with being gay did not exist before the medical construction of homosexual pathology in his

book The Myth of the Modern Homosexual.[30]

Queer theory underestimates the Foucauldian insight that power produces not just constraint, but also,

pleasure, according to Barry Adam (2000) and Adam Isaiah Green (2010). Adam suggests that sexual

identity categories, such as "gay", can have the effect of expanding the horizon of what is imaginable in a

same-sex relationship, including a richer sense of the possibilities of same-sex love and dyadic commitment.
[31]
And Green argues that queer is itself an identity category that some self-identified "queer theorists" and

"queer activists" use to consolidate a subject-position outside of the normalizing regimes of gender and

sexuality.[32] These examples call into question the degree to which identity categories need be thought of as

negative, in the evaluative sense of that term, as they underscore the self-determining potentials of the care

of the self – an idea advanced first by Foucault in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality.

The role of queer theory, and specifically its replacement of historical and sociological scholarship on lesbian

and gay people's lives with the theorising of lesbian and gay issues, and the displacement of gay and

lesbian studies by gender and queer studies, has been criticised by activist and writer Larry Kramer.[33][34][35]

Outside the US, interest in queer theory has increased during the last decade. This interest has also opened

new areas of inquiry within the field, especially in France and Brazil. In France, the Spanish philosopher

Beatriz Preciado has created important new queer works like Manifesto Contrasexual (2002), Testo

Yonqui (2008) and Pornotopia (2010). In Brazil, queer theory has influenced the education field, thanks to

the work of Guacira Lopes Louro and her followers. In the social sciences, Richard Miskolci and others have

contributed to the incorporation and transformation of queer theory in dialogue with the Brazilian tradition of

sexuality studies, especially those elaborated under the influence of Nestor Perlongher's work. Perlongher

was an Argentinian sociologist who emigrated to Brazil during the 1980s, where he published a classic study

on male prostitution called "O Negócio do Michê" (1987). He died of AIDS in 1993, but his work has survived

as an example of queer theoryavant la lettre.[citation needed]

[edit]Post-Queer Theory

At the end of the 2000s, some academics have proposed a Post-Queer theory to resolve the inadequacies

of Queer Theory, namely to have real life impact on the Queer and broader communities. Notable theories

have been promoted by Gregory Gajus in his work Soaked in Semen and Blood in the journal Metaformia

and David Ruffolo in his Mapping a Post Queer Terrain.