Castro-Borrego Silvia Pilar - Identities on the move : contemporary representations of new sexualities and gender identities

Identities on the Move

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Identities on the move : contemporary representations of new sexualities and gender identities / edited by Silvia Pilar Castro Borrego and Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-9169-9 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-9170-5 (electronic)

1. Women--Identity. 2. Women immigrants. 3. Feminism. 4. Sex. 5. Sex role. 6. Sex role in mass media. 7. Women in mass media. I. Castro Borrego, Silvia del Pilar. II. Romero Ruiz, Maria Isabel.

BH39.H445 2011

111'.85--dc22

2010037457

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To my sister, Rosa, and my brother, Curro, through love and blood.

To Rafael, a true companion and soulmate.

Silvia Pilar Castro Borrego and
Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz

Gender Strike! Seeing Gender and Sexual Identity in the Twenty-first-Century

In spring 2012, the research project New Sexualities and Gender Identities celebrated an international conference at the University of Mlaga, Spain, under the auspices of the Iberian Association of Cultural Studies which placed the emphasis on the roles of gender and sexual identity in the struggle for equality, in the light of post-structuralism, postcolonialism, and cultural feminism. This perspective urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. This questions the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of intersectional categories such as sex, gender, class, agency, and race. As a consequence, an individuals identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Proceeding from this collective work, the present volume investigates the ways in which the development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. However, this creative process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. Given the wide ranging discussion among feminist theorists about the relationship between sexuality and gender identity, this book addresses the contributions of cultural studies and literary studies to the shaping of a concept of identity focusing on identity markers such as power, gender, race, agency, and sex.

The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The legacy of this process can be traced back to the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians and prostitutes identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. Besides this, black womens bodies were stigmatized with racial stereotypes, and their sexuality became a virtually taboo subject in both black and white public discourse. If this is true of black sexuality in general, then it is more the case for homosexuality within black communities. As Cheryl Clarke states, homophobia divides black people as allies, it cuts off political growth, stifles revolution, and perpetuates patriarchal domination.

The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has also attracted the interest of postmodernism and post-structuralism as well as all types of feminisms during recent years. The book wishes to offer creative insights to pressing issues and to engage in productive dialogue answering questions such as how we respond to and organize our lives around these constructs, and what shifts or transformations we have undergone as adults and scholars in our own thinking and behavior around gender.

In our contemporary societies these concepts are being questioned, together with dominant representations of gender and sexuality, and issues like human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, child sexual abuse, sexual violence, and AIDS have come to the fore. In particular, the status of prostitutes, homosexuals, lesbians, transgendered people, transvestites, etc., as others has been the center of debate. But all this discussion has made the connections between gender and sexual categories, on the one hand, and certain codes of behavior, on the other, seem unnecessarily complex. To this, contemporary phenomena like globalization, transnationalism, and migratory movements have contributed greatly, and the sexual submission of men, women, and children under extreme economic and social circumstances is certainly not less than in previous generations and societies, but has mostly shifted out of sight.

Our contributors in the different chapters of the book seek to address the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in postcolonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a transnational, transcultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. We seek to include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, film, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts.

In this light, and starting with a historical perspective, Logie Barrows chapter is about history labels and liminality concerning different aspects of identity including gender. He claims that ascription is essential within an intellectual and class framework and that the market is based on a historical range of class relations. Gender and ethnic issues have been prevalent in the United Kingdom in comparison with class ones, and all kinds of ascription, including intellectual, are intermingled with one or more dimensions among which are gender, religion, and ethnicity, as we shall see in many contributions in this book. According to the social historian, class factors helped gender-formation intensely in the past. In this sense, Foucaults notions of discourse and power as producers of knowledge become once more fundamental in the discussion of sexuality and gender identity.