[from Thomas Pynchon in Context] Sex and Gender

We compiled a bibliography, as we're editing an essay collection on the topic and thought it would be a useful thing for contributors.

Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica, 1999

Current Cultural Contributions to theories of Gender Blending, 1996

To be involved in cultural studies is undoubtedly a contradictory project. In the process, which is not only one of observation but of textualising a version of the observations, one becomes a "cultural contribution". Cultural studies was defined and originated as a political project; "it holds theoretical and political questions in an ever irresolvable but permanent tension" (Hall, 1992: 284). To participate, to textualise, is to become a historical conjecture. It is an active engagement in a pedagogy with the textual producer about whom one is textualising. I become a part of the object of my study as I produce. In studying I politicise and theoretise the culture of gender and irreversibly change it. The truth of any "becoming", though, is a falsity, though it maybe true at the level of the text. In the politics of gender, sex, and the body, the existence of the body is for us all, a statement of gender from the moment of birth. No matter how hard you try to talk about somebody else, you are always going to be talking about yourself. This work is, in the words of Stuart Hall, a "moment of self-clarification". As well as a chronicle of cultural change it is an intervention in it and it has both overt and implicit political aims. Each and everyone of us goes through a process of self-identification which is located in a specific history, a specific structure, a specific culture and a specific interaction with these. I will not deny my position as a transgender activist, I also consider myself a neo-marxist, a transsexual man, an English liberal, a legal theorist, a father without legal recognition and so on. The list is very long, but most importantly I am gendered, not just by myself but by everybody who knows me, by all those who write of me and "my sort", by all those who work with trans people, and nearly always by trans people themselves. I, like you, cannot escape the hegemony of gendering but I also have a place in the power struggle that surrounds it. In order to appreciate current cultural contributions to theories of gender blending, it is essential to understand the history of theory surrounding sex, sexuality and gender. The most recent manifestation of that history is Queer Theory, but that has its basis in the history of pathologies and dualism that surround these areas.

2017

In the reading of Pynchon's novels, the focus has not been on the study of the artistic peculiarities of the writer as much as it has been on the novelist's view of the Western male identity, which is the product of historical, political, psychological and stylistic changes that the postmodern masculine selfhood had experienced. The learning of Pynchon's novels provides an obvious understanding of how this postmodern identity was twisted and deformed on several occasions, at times asserted and at others subverted. This paper deals most explicitly with how the project of analyzing the different aspects of identity fails to pave the way for a conspicuous recognition of the main dilemma. In this sense, Pynchon seems to be incompatible with the classical trend. He satirizes the superiority of masculine identity. In this process, no one can deny that postmodernism is devised to subvert the inculcated values about manhood which were inherited from ancient artistic background. ...

In his commentary upon the Columbian Exposition of 1893, Alan Trachtenberg describes the special women's building as occupying a space between the Court of Honor and the Midway Plaisance, 'at the point of transition from the official view of reality to the world of exotic amusement, of pleasure' (Trachtenberg 1982:222). This locational irony suggests the position of women in America at the time of the Exposition, since they were, on one hand, revered as the guardians of virtue, the home and the domestic economy, whilst still seen as possessions, apolitical and, at worst, objects for the male gaze-like the 'exotic' women on display on the midway. Should women have been integrated into the main body of the Exhibition, or should they have a separate building? If they did not have the latter division, would their activities and achievements be smothered by the dominant presence of masculine displays? These discussions from the 1890s reveal significant arguments about gender, power and identity that have persisted throughout the twentieth century. Such interpretations reveal the importance of gender within the politics of culture and begin to show the interrelationships of power, identity, ethnicity and class with issues of gender and sexuality.

Popular Music, 2001

Review of International Studies

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2021

New Woman Fiction, 2000

The Crisis of Gender and Sexuality 117 [I]t must never be forgotten that the differences which nature has fixed between the sexes are insuperable. .. The protectors of 'true womanhood' insist on these differences; but the insurgents ought to insist on them too. It is not only useless, it is suicidal to deny them. .. The perpetual. .. unassailable differences, organic and functional, biological and psychological, between men and women are just the safeguard which may enable men without scruple and apprehension to make women their political peers. Women may safely be relieved from political disabilities simply because they can never become men. J. B. Bury, 'The Insurrection of Women' (1892) 1 At a time when even those sympathetic to the women's movement asserted rigid notions of sexual difference, if only to deflate conservative fears about the sexual anarchy that would follow in the wake of women's political emancipation, feminists challenged the biological and psychological premise on which the sex/gender equation was based. While in the motto to this chapter women's claim to citizenship is linked to their inalterable difference from men, New Woman writers, arguing for women's rights on the grounds of their essential sameness, suggested in their cross-dressing narratives that women could, in fact, become men. The last chapter explored the degree to which masculinity became the target of feminist anger. By seeking to incriminate virtually all contemporary men of inherent immorality, and by contrasting male sexual violence with the caring ethic of many women, writers mobilized gendered stereotypes about intrinsically 'male' and 'female' traits. At the same

The image above represents the much talked-of American hard rock band KISS in the company of their so beloved women. I would like to show my gratitude to professor Gert Buelens for his interest in my subject matter, his suggestions and the very useful feedback that I have got over the last few months. Without his support this dissertation would not have been possible. I also want to thank Ruben De Baerdemaeker for sharing his thoughts on my 'pretty glam boys' and discussing Butler's Gender Trouble with me. 'Tack så mycket' to Lisbeth Hellman for helping me out with Freudian and Lacanian theories. I also want to thank Bob Ruysschaert from the KULeuven and Aurora Van Hamme for their comments and advice. Many thanks also go to librarian Mario Floryn from the department of Art, Music and Theatre Sciences at the UGent. I want to thank my friends Sjar and Staffan for their support, and Jon for transcribing some song lyrics for me. Last but not least I thank Liz from Leaded Fuel and Autostrada Outlaws, G.A. Sinn from Cyanide 4, Lizzy from Lizzy Borden and all the guys from Frenchkiss for talking about their music with me. You guys rock hard!