Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Gay liberation movement'

This thesis examines the development and evolution of the gay movement. It raises the questions as to why the gay movement was not organized prior to the 1960's. The study starts in the 1940's and ends in 1970. It employs qualitative research methods for the collection and analysis of primary and secondary data sources. Blumer's description of general and specific social movements and Resource Mobilization Theory were used as theoretical frames of reference. The former explained the developmental stages in the career of the movement and the latter focused on the behavior of movement organizations.

In the last forty years, U.S. national and statewide LGBT organizations, in pursuit of “equality” through a limited and focused agenda, have made remarkably swift progress moving that agenda forward. However, their agenda has been frequently criticized as prioritizing the interests of White, middle-class gay men and lesbians and ignoring the needs of other LGBT people. In their shadows have emerged numerous grassroots organizations led by queer people of color, transgender people, and low-income LGBT people. These “queer liberation” groups have often been viewed as the left wing of the GRM, but have not been extensively studied. My research investigated how these grassroots liberation organizations can be understood in relation to the equality movement, and whether they actually comprise a separate movement operating alongside, but in tension with, the mainstream gay rights movement.

This research used a qualitative content analysis, grounded in black feminism’s framework of intersectionality, queer theory, and social movement theories, to examine eight queer liberation organizations. Data streams included interviews with staff at each organization, organizational videos from each group, and the organizations’ mission statements. The study used deductive content analysis, informed by a predetermined categorization matrix drawn from social movement theories, and also featured inductive analysis to expand those categories throughout the analysis.

This study’s findings indicate that a new social movement – distinct from the mainstream equality organizations – does exist. Using criteria informed by leading social movement theories, findings demonstrate that these organizations cannot be understood as part of the mainstream equality movement but must be considered a separate social movement. This “queer liberation movement” has constituents, goals, strategies, and structures that differ sharply from the mainstream equality organizations. This new movement prioritizes queer people in multiple subordinated identity categories, is concerned with rebuilding institutions and structures, rather than with achieving access to them, and is grounded more in “liberation” or “justice” frameworks than “equality.” This new movement does not share the equality organizations’ priorities (e.g., marriage) and, instead, pursues a different agenda, include challenging the criminal justice and immigration systems, and strengthening the social safety net.

Additionally, the study found that this new movement complicates existing social movement theory. For decades, social movement scholars have documented how the redistributive agenda of the early 20th century class-based social movements has been replaced by the demands for access and recognition put forward by the identity-based movements of the 1960s New Left. While the mainstream equality movement can clearly be characterized as an identity-based social movement, the same is not true of the groups in this study. This queer liberation movement, although centered on identity claims, has goals that are redistributive as well as recognition-based.

While the emergence of this distinct social movement is significant on its own, of equal significance is the fact that it represents a new post-structuralist model of social movement. This study presents a “four-domain” framework to explain how this movement exists simultaneously inside and outside of other social movements, as a bridge between them, and as its own movement. Implications for research, practice, and policy in social work and allied fields are presented.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation reports on a study that straddles the applied linguistic fields of discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and a sociolinguistic field recently referred to as “queer linguistics”. The study investigated the linguistic construction of gay mobilisation in South African media discourses across a period of almost 30 years. It aimed to identify characteristics of the Discourse that topicalised the gay liberation movement, considering specifically the linguistic means used in articulating on the one hand the need and the right to gay liberation, and on the other hand the public opposition to acknowledging gay rights. It invoked a social theory identified as ‘framing theory’ in analysing the different kinds of views, attitudes, social positions and arguments motivating for or agitating against the institution and protection of gay rights in post-apartheid South Africa. The project takes Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), particularly its applications in considering features and functions of media discourses, as its primary theoretical framework. First, following the insistence of the Discourse-historical approach put forward by Wodak (1990), it gives an overview of the social and historical context against which the recognition of gay rights in South Africa developed. It follows the analytic methodology suggested by van Dijk (1985) in considering issues of ‘language and power’, and the ways in which the access of elites to media attention is drawn on to support and give credence to particular ideologies. Supplementary to the application of CDA methods, an analytic approach from the fields of Social Movement Theory and Collective Action Framing is introduced to make sense of the discursive strategies implemented in the Discourse thematically tied to the South African gay liberation movement, particularly from the early 1980s up to 2006. This period was marked by the movement’s pursuit of social mobilization. Attention went to the ways in which arguments for and against gay rights were instantiated in the media using a variety of different frames. Such analysis could disclose the extent to which the "anti-apartheid" master frame was utilised by actors of the gay liberation movement. Based on their circulation demographics, two local South African weekly newspapers, City Press and Mail & Guardian, were screened in order to identify articles and letters to the editor relevant to the gay liberation discourse. The full complement of published items topicalising homosexuality directly and indirectly were collected as two corpora in order to assess the ways in which they contributed to public discourses of gay liberation. Two analytic exercises were done: first, the content of the full data-set was “tagged” and categorised according to the textual nature of the newspaper item, and the kinds of frames used in its presentation; second, a number of articles and letters were selected from the corpora for detailed analysis that would illustrate the use of the various strategies and frames found to characterise the Discourse. The first more quantitative analysis provided an overview of patterns, trends and editorial practices typically used in the media representations. The second more qualitative analysis provided insight into the finer details of media presention of ideas aimed at affecting the knowledge and attitudes of the intended and imagined readers. The findings of these analyses were presented in terms of quantifiable results as well as detailed descriptions. In broad strokes, the quantifiable findings showed that the Mail & Guardian corpus was significantly more outspoken in advocating for gay rights than the City Press corpus, and that both publications frequently framed homosexuality in terms of “tolerance”, “religion” and “rights”. The quantifiable findings also showed that in their discourses of gay tolerance and gay rights, both the City Press and the Mail & Guardian made significant use of frames typically and widely used by the media in the discourse of political change at the time. The detailed analyses investigated the textual reproduction of the authors’ ideologies, drawing attention to their regular reliance on certain types of arguments used for and against gay rights in the selected newspapers.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie proefskrif lewer verslag oor ‘n studie wat die toegepaste taalwetenskapterreine van diskoersanalise en kritiese diskoersanalise asook ‘n sosiolinguistiese terrein wat sedert onlangs “queer-taalwetenskap” genoem word, betrek. In die studie word daar ondersoek ingestel na die linguistiese konstruksie van gaymobilisering in Suid-Afrikaanse mediadiskoerse wat oor ‘n tydperk van bykans 30 jaar strek. Die doel van die studie was om eienskappe van die Diskoers wat die gaybevrydingsbeweging topikaliseer te identifiseer, met inagname van spesifiek die taalkundige middele gebruik tydens die artikulering van die behoefte aan en die reg tot gaybevryding aan die een kant en die openbare weerstand teen die erkenning van gayregte aan die ander kant. Die analises van die verskillende standpunte, gesindhede, sosiale posisies en argumente ten gunste van of teen die instelling en beskerming van gayregte in post-apartheid Suid-Afrika beroep hulself op ‘n sosiale teorie wat as “ramingsteorie” (Engels: framing theory) geïdentifiseer is. Die projek neem kritiese diskoersanalise as hoof teoretiese raamwerk aan, veral kritiese diskoersanalise se toepassings in die oorweging van kenmerke en funksies van mediadiskoerse. Eerstens, deur die aandrang van die Diskoers-historiese benadering voorgestel deur Wodak (1990) te volg, word daar ‘n oorsig oor die sosiale en historiese konteks gegee waarin die erkenning van gayregte in Suid-Afrika ontwikkel het. Die analitiese metodologie voorgestel deur van Dijk (1985) word gebruik tydens die oorweging van kwessies rakende “taal en mag” asook wyses waarop sogenaamde “elites” se toegang tot media-aandag betrek word om geloofwaardigheid aan bepaalde ideologieë te verleen. Aanvullend tot die toepassing van kritiese diskoersanalise-metodes word ‘n analitiese benadering uit die terreine van Sosiale Bewegingsteorie en Kollektiewe Ramingsteorie betrek om sin te maak uit die diskursiewe strategieë wat (spesifiek van die vroeë 1980s tot 2006) geïmplementeer is in die Diskoers wat tematies aan die Suid-Afrikaanse gaybevrydingsbeweging verbind is. Hierdie tydperk is gekenmerk deur die beweging se nastrewing van sosiale mobilisering. Aandag is verleen aan die wyses waarop argumente ten guste van en teen gayregte geïnstansieer is in die media deur gebruik te maak van ‘n verskeidenheid rame. Só ‘n analise kan die mate waarin die “anti-apartheid” meesterraam deur spelers in die gaybevrydingsbeweging gebruik is, onthul. Gebaseer op hul oplaagdemografie is bydraes in twee Suid-Afrikaanse weeklikse koerante, City Press en Mail & Guardian gesif om artikels en briewe aan die redakteur relevant tot die gaybevrydingsdiskoers te identifiseer. Die vol getal gepubliseerde items wat homoseksualiteit direk en/of indirek topikaliseer, is as twee korpusse versamel om sodoende die wyses te ondersoek waarop hulle bydra tot openbare diskoerse van gaybevryding. Twee analitiese oefeninge is uitgevoer: eerstens is die inhoud van die volledige datastel geëtiketteer en gekategoriseer op grond van die teks-aard van die koerantitem en die tipe rame wat in die item se aanbieding gebruik is; tweedens is ‘n aantal artikels en briewe uit die korpusse geselekteer vir gedetailleerde analise wat die gebruik van verskeie strategieë en rame sou illustreer wat bevind is om kenmerkend van die Diskoers te wees. Die eerste, meer kwantitatiewe analise het ‘n oorsig gegee oor patrone, tendense en redaksionele praktyke wat tipies in die mediavoorstellings gebruik is. Die tweede, meer kwalitatiewe analise het insig gegee in die fyner besonderhede van mediavoorstelling van idees wat daarop gemik is om die kennis en gesindhede van die bedoelde en denkbeeldige lesers te affekteer. Die bevindinge van hierdie analises is in terme van kwantifiseerbare resultate asook gedetailleerde beskrywings aangebied. In breë trekke het die kwantifiseerbare bevindinge daarop gedui dat die Mail & Guardian-korpus beduidend meer uitgesproke as die City Press-korpus was in die bepleiting van gayregte, en dat beide koerante gereeld homoseksualiteit in terme van “toleransie”, “godsdiens” en “regte” geraam het. Die kwantifiseerbare bevindinge het ook aangetoon dat beide City Press en Mail & Guardian beduidend van rame gebruik gemaak het wat tipies en wyd in daardie stadium deur die media gebruik is in die diskoers van politieke verandering. Die gedetailleerde analises het ondersoek ingestel na die tekstuele reproduksie van die skrywers se ideologieë, en spesifiek die aandag gevestig op hul gereelde staatmaking op sekere tipes argumente wat in die geselekteerde koerante vir en teen gayregte gebruik is.

Citizens’ increased access to the internet is transforming political landscapes across the globe. The implications for civil society, culture, religion, governmental legitimacy and accountability are vast. In nations where one does not typically expect “modern” or egalitarian ideals to be prevalent among highly religious and conservative populations, those with motivations to unite around socially and culturally taboo causes are no longer forced to silently acquiesce and accept the status quo. The internet has proven to be an invaluable tool for those aiming to engage in social activism, as it allows citizens in highly oppressive authoritarian regimes to covertly mobilize and coordinate online protest events (such as hashtag campaigns, proclamations via social media, signing of petitions, and even DDoS attacks) without the fear of repression.

What catalyzes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) equality movements in authoritarian regimes, specifically with respect to the Middle East and North African region? This thesis argues that gay rights movements are more likely to emerge in politically repressive, more conservative states when new political opportunities—namely access to the internet for purposes of political organization—become available. This master’s thesis identifies why LGBTQ movements emerged in Morocco and Algeria, but not in Tunisia until after it underwent democratization. These states will be analyzed in order to gauge the strength of their LGBTQ rights movements and, most importantly, to identify which variables most cogently explain their existence altogether.

In recent history, the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) persons have been in constant fluctuation. Many states criminalize homosexual behavior while other states legally recognize same-sex marriages and same-sex adoptions. There are also irregular patterns where LGBT interest groups form across the globe. With this research project, I begin to explain why these discrepancies in the treatment of homosexuality and the formation of LGBT interest groups occur. I develop a theory that the most obvious contrast across the globe occurs when analyzing the treatment of homosexuals in OECD member states versus non-OECD countries. OECD nations tend to see the gay community struggle for more advanced civil rights and government protections, while non-OECD states have to worry about fundamental human rights to life and liberty. I find that this specific dichotomization is what causes the irregular LGBT interest group formation pattern across the globe; non-OECD nations tend to have fewer LGBT interest groups than their OECD counterparts. When looking at why non-OECD nations and OECD nations suppress the rights of their gay citizens, I find that religion plays a critical role in the suppression of the gay community. In this analysis, I measure religion several different ways, including the institution of an official state religion as well as the levels of religiosity within a nation. Regardless of how this variable is manipulated and measured, statistical analysis continuously shows that religion’s influence is the single most significant factor in leading to a decrease in both human and civil rights for gays and lesbians across the globe. Further analysis indicates that Judaism plays the most significant role out the three major world religions in the suppression of civil rights for homosexuals in OECD nations.

This study attempted to make releveant connections between the marginalization theory posited by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky and Indiana news media coverage of the 1993 Gay, Lesbian and Bi-Sexual March on Washington. To date, Herman and Chomsky's work has looked at the marginalization of political or racial minorities. This study looked at how the elements of marginalization, the perpetuation of stereotypes and the complete annihilation of thought or consideration of the minority group, as seen regarding gay and lesbian people in America. Further, the theory guided the study's content analysis of Indiana news media coverage of the 1993 Gay, Lesbian and Bi-Sexual March on Washington. Taking the form of a case study, the contextual basis for the content analysis was provided by an interview with Gregory Adams, media co-chair for the march.Indiana coverage of the march in The Indianapolis Star was content analyzed sentence-by-sentence, while the same coverage was analyzed sentence-by-sentence from stories broadcast on WISH-TV, Channel 8 in Indianapolis. In addition, media images from the March broadcast by WISH-TV, Channel 8 in Indianapolis were also content analyzed video cut-by-cut.The study found gay and lesbian people were marginalized in the text of the Indiana news media coverage. The study also found that the marginalization of gay and lesbian people in the coverage was consistent among the three media types measured (newspaper text, television text and television images).
Department of Journalism

This thesis examines the public debate on homosexuality in New Zealand in the period 1960-86. Its focus is primarily on male homosexuality because the central issue was the continued criminalization of male same-sex sexual acts. The thesis notes irresolvable problems of definition of homosexuality involving discussions of behaviour, orientation and identity. Nevertheless, the debate proceeded on a binary basis, that homosexuals and heterosexuals were two clearly defined groups of people. The thesis begins by noting the repression and invisibility of homosexuals in the 1960s. It then explores the origins and significance of the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Society and the gay liberation movement. Because of the significance of religion in regard to the debate, a chapter is devoted to major change and cleavage that occurred within the churches relating to homosexuality in the period reviewed. Finally the intense fifteen months of debate that occurred prior to decriminalization of male homosexual activity in July 1986 is studied at depth. The thesis highlights the intensity of feeling that the debate engendered. This was the result of the clash of fundamentally different worldviews and value systems. Behind the particular issue lay the question of the moral and social status of homosexuals and homosexual acts. So fundamental was this division that from both sides the very future of society seemed to be at stake. Worlds were in collision.
Note: Thesis now published. Guy, L (2002). Worlds in collision : the gay debate in New Zealand, 1960-1986. Wellington [N.Z.]: Victoria University Press, 2002. ISBN 0864734387

This dissertation examines the gay rights movement occurring in Dallas, Texas, from the mid-twentieth century to present day by focusing on the work of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance (DGLA), previously known as the Dallas Gay Political Caucus and the Dallas Gay Alliance. Members of that group utilized a methodology they called "the Dallas Way" that minimized mass protests and rallies in favor of using backroom negotiations with the people who could make the changes sought by the movement. The fact that most of the members of the DGLA were white, professional men aided in the success of their methodology. Particularly useful in this type of effort is the use of legal action. The Dallas community supported several lawsuits that attempted to overthrow various versions of sodomy laws in the Texas Penal Code that criminalized an entire population of gay men and lesbians in the state.

This thesis argues that the work of the artist David McDiarmid is to be read as an enactment of late twentieth century gay male and queer politics. It will analyse how both the idea and the cultural specificity of ???America??? impacted on the work of this Australian artist resident in New York from 1979 to 1987. The thesis examines how African American music, The Beats, notions of ???hip??? and ???cool???, street art and graffiti, the underground dance club Paradise Garage, street cruising and gay male urban culture influenced the sensibility and the materiality of the artist???s work. McDiarmid???s cultural practice of dress and adornment, it is proposed, forms an essential part of his creative oeuvre and of the ???queer worldmaking??? which is the driver of his creative achievements. The thesis proposes that McDiarmid was a Proto-queer artist before the politics of queer emerged in the 1980s and that his work, including his own life-as-art practices of dress and adornment, enact a mobile rather than fixed gay male identity.

Cette thèse de doctorat étudie les mouvements LGBT en Belgique, en France et en Espagne à travers une double comparaison (entre les cas et à travers le temps) qui intègre également les échanges et influences transnationaux et internationaux. Elle examine l’émergence et le développement de la revendication d’ouverture du mariage civil aux couples de même sexe dans ces pays, analysant les convergences en termes de contenu des demandes et de timing des mobilisations. Par conséquent, elle porte sur des convergences au niveau des mouvements sociaux, à l’inverse de la majeure partie de la littérature, qui se concentre sur les convergences de politiques publiques. Cette situation impose de construire une grille d’analyse basée sur la littérature sur les mouvements sociaux, les politiques publiques et les relations internationales (influence des normes internationales). Le développement des revendications relatives au droit au mariage a été retracé de manière généalogique depuis la fin des années 1980. La comparaison repose sur la méthode du most different systems design et un travail empirique important combinant analyse documentaire et entretiens a été réalisé. Cette thèse confirme l’importance de l’étude des échanges et des influences internationaux et transnationaux pour comprendre la politique domestique et insiste sur l’influence cruciale du réseautage transnational sur les revendications des mouvements sociaux. Elle révèle aussi quelques cas de diffusion entre mouvements sociaux et montre comment des caractéristiques et des contraintes communes peuvent inciter les mouvements sociaux à formuler des revendications similaires. Par ailleurs, les discours en faveur du droit au mariage ont été analysés avec soin. L’émergence de cette revendication a aussi été mise en perspective sur le plan historique, ce qui implique de réfléchir aux modalités de transformation des mouvements LGBT au cours des trente dernières années. Pour terminer, la notion de citoyenneté sexuelle a été interrogée et la manière dont l’accès à la citoyenneté a été posé a été examinée à partir du concept de resignification proposé par Judith Butler.

This dissertation looks at LGBT movements in Belgium, France and Spain through a double comparison (between cases and through time), which also takes into account transnational and international exchanges and influences. It investigates the simultaneous emergence and development of same-sex marriage claims in these countries, examining convergences in the content of the claims and the timing of protest. Therefore, it looks at convergences at the level of social movements, unlike most of the literature, which focuses on convergences in public policies. This specific research interests implies building an analytical model based on the literature on social movements, public policies and international relations (influence of international norms). It has also required a genealogical account of the development of same-sex marriage claims in each country from the end of the eighties until now. The comparison is based on the most different systems design method, and an extensive field work combining archives analysis and interviews has been carried out. This dissertation confirms the importance of taking into account international and transnational exchanges and influences to understand domestic politics, and insists on the crucial influence of transnational networking on social movements claims. It also discloses some cases of diffusion between social movements and shows how common characteristics and constraints may induce social movements to make similar but independent decisions. Discourses in favour of same-sex marriage have been carefully analysed, and the emergence of this claim has been put into a historical perspective. This implies a reflection on the transformations of the LGBT movement over the last thirty years. Finally, this dissertation interrogates the notion of sexual citizenship and examines the specific mechanisms through which access to citizenship has been proposed, discussing Judith Butler’s concept of resignification.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Superficial information of the civil wars in Aceh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka creates the idea that both conflicts were in similar situations when they were hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. It thus seems surprising that in the wake of the tsunami, the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia signed a peace agreement, while the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Government of Sri Lanka returned to war. This thesis aims to explore what factors related to the tsunami contributed to this difference and whether rational choice theory can serve as an explanation for this difference. In order to find out, I conducted a qualitative comparative case study though the analysis of secondary documents. The results suggest that the factors that contributed to the difference can be divided into four broad themes: (1) the timing of the tsunami and thus the pre-disaster context; (2) the geographical situation and with that, the military impact; (3) the types of guerilla groups, including their abilities to rule, their access to financial capital and their strategic; (4) the role of the international community, which can be further divided into firstly, the geopolitical relevance of these countries, and secondly, internationalization, community engagement and separating the tsunami and conflict. I believe that rational choice theory explains the difference in outcome between the two conflicts very well. This theory assumes that people, given the circumstances, and in view of all the possible options, will act in line with the option that is expected to satisfy them most and minimize their losses. Applying this theory to the case studies of Aceh and Sri Lanka following the tsunami, it was appealing for the Free Aceh Movement to settle, but this was not the case for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. As a result, the former chose to sign a peace agreement with the Government of Indonesia, whereas the latter chose to continue its fight against the Government of Sri Lanka.

In this research, face-to-face in-depth interviews and extensive participant observations were conducted. There are twenty-five major informants, aged from early 20s to mid 40s, and a small number of supplementary ones. They were either Shanghai residents or were active in the city's lala communities.
In this thesis, I will look into the conflict between public inauguration and the private dilemma of lalas in contemporary urban China and the strategies they employed to cope with this conflict. Also, I will theorize lalas' existences in both ideological public and private domains, and the implication of the dominant community politics of "public correctness" to their symbolic existence and survival.
Since the economic reform period (1978 onwards), Shanghai has become one of the most vibrant sites of lala (the local identity for women with same-sex desires) communities in China. During my field visits from 2005 to 2007, I interviewed twenty-five self-identified lalas in Shanghai. One recurring theme that always came up in the interviews is the conflicts between the informants' desire to have same-sex relationship and the familial expectation of them to get married, or for those who have married, the pressure to maintain the heterosexual family.
The newly acquired economic freedom and geographical mobility in the reform era do not automatically translate into a breakaway from family control. The existence of rapidly developing and widely accessible tongzhi communities in both online and offline spaces, together with a paradigmatic change of the official treatment of homosexual subjects in the legal and medical domains, and the increasingly visible and organized involvements of state experts in the new normalization project of the homosexual population in the country, the exposure and discussion of homosexuality and its subjects have never been so public (in spatial and ideological senses) and diverse as compared to the past decades. Homosexual desire is going more and more public, yet the majority of homosexual population remains to be closeted subjects who are forced to keep their desires and presence as invisible as possible in non-public contexts such as family and more specifically, the heterosexual home space.
Kam, Yip Lo Lucetta.
Advisers: Kit Wai Eric Ma; Hon Ming Yip.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-09, Section: A, page: .
Thesis submitted in: December 2008.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-214).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
School code: 1307.

by Yuen Yun Chou.
Thesis submitted in: December 1997.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-166).
Abstract also in Chinese.
Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter Chapter 2 --- Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
Introduction --- p.5
New Social Movements --- p.5
Alberto Melucci's Analytical Framework of Social Movement --- p.14
Charles Taylor's Interpretative Framework of Human Action --- p.18
An Interpretative Framework for Social Movement Studies --- p.26
Objectives of this Study --- p.33
Methodology --- p.34
Outline of the Thesis --- p.35
Chapter Chapter 3 --- The History of Hong Kong Gay Men and Lesbians
Introduction --- p.37
Gay Men and Lesbians: Rise as A Subaltern Group --- p.37
Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Groups --- p.46
Terminology --- p.50
Chapter Chapter 4 --- The Gay Self
Introduction --- p.52
Discovering a Gay Self --- p.52
Coming out: Living a Gay Life --- p.64
Chapter Chapter 5 --- Interpreting Predicament
Introduction --- p.69
The Predicament: an Ideal Way of Life --- p.69
The Predicament: the Concerns --- p.71
Authenticity and the Perception of Predicament --- p.79
Chapter Chapter 6 --- The Gay Selves: Entering the Gay and Lesbian Groups
Introduction --- p.81
Making Sense of Participation --- p.81
Locating the Process of Collective Identity --- p.98
Chapter Chapter 7 --- In Search of Authenticity in Everyday Life
Introduction --- p.109
The Submerged Networks in Everyday Life: the Alternative Space --- p.109
Everyday Resistance and Accomplishment --- p.120
The Limited Authenticity in Everyday Life --- p.131
Chapter Chapter 8 --- Conclusion
From “I´ح to “We´ح --- p.135
The Ideal of Authenticity --- p.148
The Issue of Identity in Social Movement --- p.151
Limitation
Appendix
Bibliography

This thesis examines community activism around HIV/AIDS in Australia. Specifically, it looks at the role that the gay community played in the social, medical and political response to the virus. Drawing conclusions about the cultural impact of social movements, the thesis argues that AIDS activism contributed to improving social attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. It also concludes that AIDS activism challenged some entrenched cultural patterns of the medical system in Australia, allowing greater scope for non-medical intervention into the domain of health and illness. The thesis draws on a range of sources, including archival documents and indepth interviews, to create a narrative history of the development of AIDS activism. Drawing from social movement theory, the thesis looks at the structure and form of the 'AIDS movement' to explain how it mobilised as it did. The narrative history approach enables the study to detail the rise of the AIDS movement in historical context, exploring it as a product of the history of homosexual discrimination and marginalisation in Australia. The thesis also highlights the role that emotions such as fear, anger and trust/mistrust played in both motivating and framing movement action. While the thesis is a study of the impact of a social movement, it does not attempt to measure, in a positivistic sense, the tangible outcomes of the AIDS movement. Rather, it looks for shifts in cultural codes or new knowledges that were produced by movement action - what has been termed the 'hidden efficacy' of a social movement. This approach draws on the sociology of knowledge, looking at the way AIDS activists interjected new 'ways of knowing' into existing social discourses about homosexuality as well about as public health and medicine. Part one of the thesis is about the history of homosexuality in Australia and the rise of the AIDS movement. It also details the way in which the AIDS movement was able to influence public attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Part two of the thesis looks at the way in which the AIDS movement challenged the entrenched authority of western medical professionals in the public health sector by demonstrating an alternative, socially-oriented approach to HIV prevention. AIDS activists introduced an alternative framework of knowledge to the medical arena, emphasising the relevance of 'non-medical' knowledge to clinical decision making. Part three of the thesis looks at the way in which AIDS activists confronted the stigma and shame surrounding HIV/AIDS by creating memorials to people who had died from AIDS. These memorials deliberately sought to replace feelings of shame associated with HIV/AIDS by legitimising and paying respect to feelings of grief related to AIDS. This study shows how social movement action is co-currently emotionally, historically and intellectually derived - in this case a product of the fear, grief and anger associated with AIDS converging with the history and political capacity of gay men in Australia. The thesis concludes that a detailed historical reading of movement action can reveal the areas where movements have challenged conventional cultural, moral or social codes. Social movements contribute to the cultural stories and moral scripts that determine how we perceive the world.

This dissertation broadens the scope of our understanding of the gay liberation movement in the United States by situating it in the wider intellectual, cultural, and political currents of the three decades following the Second World War. By examining the personal papers of key gay and lesbian activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as the print media that disseminated their ideas to a nationwide public, it demonstrates the profound influence of the social thought of the 1940s and 1950s on the movement, and traces that reception by way of social movements: in particular, the new left, radical feminism, and the youth counterculture. It shows that midcentury theorists in a range of disciplines offered a distinct way of understanding the relationship between society and the self that inverted established hierarchies, thus enabling gay liberation activists and writers to anchor their vision of social transformation in the reconstruction of sexuality, gender, and the psyche. This dissertation focuses not only on the content, but also the context, of the gay liberation print culture, and in so doing reveals the scale and depth of the movement’s public sphere, thus contributing to scholarly knowledge of the nascent networks and solidarities that the underground press made possible, including among gays, lesbians, and transgendered people in prisons, rural areas, and in the military. It shows that as the cultural values and social upheavals that nurtured gay liberation receded in the course of the early 1970s, the utopian aspirations with which the movement began gave way to an interest-group pluralism and a depoliticized preoccupation with private life. This dissertation therefore clarifies the extent to which gay liberation was both a brief and exceptional moment in the longer trajectory of gay and lesbian politics in the United States and an expression of longings and anxieties that were widely shared by many Americans in the postwar era.

This dissertation is the product of research into white, South African masculinities. It is concerned with the official treatment of white, gay men in this country by the governments of the day from the 1960s to 2000 and the government’s control of hegemonic masculinity in order to maintain power. By looking at gay masculinities the threat to hegemonic masculinity was ascertained as well as the different versions of heterosexual masculinities. This thesis also analyses the degree of change in the toleration or acceptance of white homosexuality in South Africa from churches, society, and elements within the SAP and the SADF as well as within gay organisations. Legislative achievements in the Constitutional Court show the most extreme changes in the perceptions of gay masculinities. This dissertation primarily begins in the 1960s, looking at why it was necessary to set up the 1968 Select Committee. This committee investigated criminalising all male homosexual acts, including those in private and also aimed to dictate societal norms and maintain white, privileged, hegemonic masculinity established and defined by the NP government. The state had always repressed homosexuality through law; even colonial legislation proved this. It was the creation and maintenance of hegemonic masculinity that advocated such legislation. 1966 was the focal year where white homosexuality became a recognisable problem. A gay party was held at a Johannesburg residence, which made white homosexuality visible and alerted the police to this alternative masculinity. The Select Committee, however, did not fulfil its initial aims. Once elements within the SAP were faced with the visibility of white homosexuality, their power thereby being challenged, Major van Zyl set about requesting stricter legislation by proposing amendments to the Minister of Justice regarding the 1957 Immorality Act and submitting evidence to the Select Committee. However, numerous submissions to and interviews by the Select Committee proved that it was unnecessary and illogical to criminalise private homosexuality. Such submissions showed white homosexuality was no societal threat and that some in white society recognised gay masculinities and challenged hegemonic masculinity. Consequently the Select Committee did not propose stricter legislation regarding homosexuality. Furthermore, repressive official treatment of white, male homosexuals was evident in the SADF in the 1970 and 1980s. Through a military perception of masculinity, that is, aggressive masculinity, most in the SADF were intent on conforming its white soldiers to the traditional definition of masculinity, the NP government’s definition of white masculinity, which did not include homosexual men. Dr Levine used electro-shock therapy to ‘cure’ gay conscripts at 1 Military Hospital. This extreme practice of ensuring conformity was no longer utilised by the 1980s and there was also some unofficial acceptance of white homosexuality within the SADF by some white commanders and soldiers. There was no gay liberation movement to speak of until the 1980s. GASA, a white gay organisation, led the movement but it was to be unsuccessful in that it supported the NP government, that is, it benefited from hegemonic masculinity because GASA’s membership was predominantly white men. Because of this GASA was seen to support the government’s policy of apartheid and there ensued the consequent debate between gay essentialism and gay rights as part of the broader struggle. GASA was purely reactionary, because in effect it did not really want change and was therefore ineffective. The gay movement grew but it did not unify. This failure to unify meant the gay liberation movement, as a movement had failed, even though, later, liberation and much change was achieved, mainly through the work of the NCGLE. Like the 1968 Select Committee, the President’s Council was set up in 1985 to once again investigate stricter penalties against homosexuality. The ANC was still very quiet on the issue of gay rights, supporting heterosexist hegemony and not recognising gay masculinities. The President’s Council did not recommend stricter legislation against homosexual men but the 1988 Sexual Offences Act retained the penalties against homosexuality as stipulated by the 1969 Immorality Amendment Act. Gay essentialism damaged any headway regarding gay rights, especially when it came to gaining the support of progressive organisation in the broader political struggle because there was so much in-fighting regarding defining gay masculinities. Race could not be discounted in this equation and the RGO, a black gay organisation, challenged GASA’s support of the NP government. New gay organisations only contributed to the failure of the gay liberation movement because again there was no unity. In 1989 Albie Sachs of the ANC met with a liberal gay organisation, OGLA, and finally gay rights were beginning to be taken seriously, culminating in the protection of gay rights in the 1996 Constitution. This was due to individual members of the ANC and Kevan Botha, the lawyer hired by the NCGLE to represent gay rights at CODESA. Once sexual orientation was retained in the equality clause of the Constitution it was left to the NCGLE to fight for the legal practice of equality for gay men and lesbians. There was also greater toleration and even acceptance of homosexuality by the South African society at large, both black and white, the churches, and the SAP, especially officially. Hence, although the gay liberation movement had failed, gay rights had been entrenched and change allowed for potential equality, the last of which would be legal gay marriage, which remains to be seen.
Prof. L. Grundlingh

There is a growing rift between HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men, manifested in social, economic, structural and political divisiveness which, if not resolved may 'kill' the gay liberation movement. While disasters generally create organizational solidarity, AIDS has operated in reverse, spawning a variety of competitive AIDS service organizations, alienating seropositive gays from the mainstream gay community, and disenfranchising seronegative gay men as human and financial resources are redirected towards persons living with HIV and AIDS. Serostatus has become a social marker of societal status, operating in a bimodal discriminatory manner. Seronegative gay men experience discrimination within the gay community as funding for and services to this sector diminish. Seropositive gay men (and the organizations which provide for some of their needs) have culturally, economically and socially dismissed the needs of seronegative gay men (survivor guilt, safer sex education, etc) in favour of providing social and resource based services to seropositive gay men. The social distance between the gay movement and the AIDS movement has correspondingly increased. If this trend continues, it will serve to further push HIVpositive and HIV-negative gay men into polarized camps, resulting in a wider separation of the gay movement from the AIDS movement. The stigmatization of HIV-positive people will subsequently increase both within and outside of the gay movement, and any ability to present a unified Gay Liberation front will correspondingly diminish. Additionally, the emergent notion that to be gay is to be HIV-positive will solidify. This will a) further stigmatize all gay men in the eyes of the non-gay population, and b) exacerbate the rift between HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men within the gay community, reversing the stigma of HIV such that to be HIV-negative will be a marker of non-gay identity. In short, seropositivity will become the defining element of gayness. In order to avert further divisiveness, and minimization of the gay movement, an effort must be made towards reestablishing the original ideology of cooperation, which was the hallmark of the earlier days of AIDS activism. This will require a debureaucratization of AIDS service organizations; coalition building among AIDS service organizations and gay liberation organizations; and personal attitudinal and behaviour changes on the part of both seropositive and seronegative gays regarding HIV status as a medical, rather than social phenomenon.

This dissertation examines the role of scientific and medical disciplines in the construction of homosexuality in Mexico, and how non-normative gender and sexual subjects engaged in political activism, body modifications, and aesthetic production to challenge the pathologizing discourses reinforced by the increasing authority of the biomedical sciences. Chapter 1 examines the role of photography as a medical instrument in the first documented sex-reassignment treatment in the Western Hemisphere performed by Mexican physician and sexologist Rafael Sandoval Camacho in the early 1950s, and how his patient Marta Olmos, Mexico’s first transsexual woman, embraced photojournalism as a medium to document, archive, and validate her identity as a woman. In chapter 2, I examine the popular phenomenon of publishing photographs of erotized trans sex workers known as Mujercitos during the 1970s in Alarma!, Mexico’s most influential crime tabloid magazine, and how these marginalized subjects appropriated biomedical technologies like “sex hormones” intended to regulate gender and sexual deviance to construct bodily identities that challenged the medical and criminological positions on the essentialist natures of gender expression, sexual desire, and the sexed body. Chapter 3 examines the early gay narrative of Luis Zapata and José Rafael Calva that emerged in conjunction to Mexico’s Homosexual Liberation Movement in the late 1970s. My analysis demonstrates how Zapata’s El vampiro de la colonia Roma [Adonis García: A Picaresque Novel] (1979), and Calva’s Utopía gay [Gay Utopia] (1983) present sharp critiques shared by Mexico’s homosexual liberation groups on the growing authority of disciplines like psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and biomedicine in pathologizing homosexuality. Chapter 4 examines the changing understandings of homosexuality, homosexual desire, and the homosexual body during the HIV/AIDS crisis through the work of Julio Galán, Nahum B. Zenil, and art collective Taller Documentación Visual. My analysis presents the role of the HIV virus not as an explicit visual reference but rather as an elusive, spectral, and dangerous entity that is identifiable through the aesthetic and formal composition of the artists’ works, best exemplified by the references to condoms as physical and symbolic devices in the mediation of gay sexual contact and desire. This dissertation demonstrates the critical roles of biomedicine, criminology, sexology, and psychiatry in regulating diverse forms of Mexican homosexualities, while simultaneously functioning as liminal disciplines strategically adopted by homosexual subjects to redefine, shape, and validate their desired bodily, sexual, and subjective identities.

This project analyzes the sexual and gender politics of flight attendants, especially the men who did this work, since the 1930s. It traces how and why the flight attendant corps became the nearly exclusive domain of white women by the 1950s, then considers the various legal battles under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to re-integrate men into the workforce, open up greater opportunities for African-Americans, and liberate women from onerous age and marriage restrictions that cut short their careers. While other scholars have emphasized flight attendants' contributions in battling sexism in the courts, this project is unique in expanding such consideration to homosexuality. Male flight attendants' status as gender pariahs in the workforce (as men performing "women's work")--combined with the fact that many of them were gay--made them objects of "homosexual panic" in the 1950s, both in legal proceedings and in various forms of extra-legal intimidation. A decade later, aspirant flight attendants were participants in some of the first cases brought by men under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Their victories in the courts greatly benefited the gay community, among others, which thereby enjoyed greater freedom to enter a highly visible, public-relationsoriented corporate career. As such, my project helps to recast the legal legacy of the civil rights movement as a three-pronged reform, confronting homophobia as well as racism and sexism. Beyond legal considerations, Manhood Up in the Air also examines how both labor unions and the airlines negotiated a legal environment and public sentiment that largely condoned firing homosexuals, while nonetheless accommodating gay employees. This form of accommodation existed in the 1950s, though much more precariously than in the post-Stonewall decade of the 1970s. Thus, the project records the pre-history to the current reality, in which both corporations (with airlines at the forefront) and labor unions have become core supporters of the contemporary gay rights movement.
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