Queer Politics In Neoliberal Times (1970s-2010s), Margot Weiss
Dec 2017
Queer Politics In Neoliberal Times (1970s-2010s), Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Neoliberalism has had a profound effect on post-1970s LGBT/queer cultures and politics. This essay reviews how, by privatizing social services, fostering consumer citizenship, and promoting corporate welfare and urban redevelopment, neoliberal policies have pit “deserving” gays and lesbians against “undeserving” others: the same-sex married couple vs. the “welfare queen,” the gay/lesbian consumer-citizen vs. the poor queer, and the gay gentrifier vs. the “dangerous” other. Historicizing these oppositions reveals the intersections of sexuality, class, gender, race, and social policy that remain central to queer politics today.
Discipline And Desire: Feminist Politics, Queer Studies, And New Queer Anthropology, Margot Weiss
Dec 2015
Discipline And Desire: Feminist Politics, Queer Studies, And New Queer Anthropology, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
This chapter situates contemporary queer anthropology within histories of the contested relationships between gender and sexuality, and feminist and queer studies. I begin with the delineation of gender as the domain of feminist studies, and sexuality as the domain of queer studies, staging a series of analogical readings of feminist and queer studies and their proper objects and political investments. I focus on two questions: the problematic of institutionalization (and the closure or fixity institutionalization represents) and the problematic of good enough objects—objects that might satisfy the political desires we have invested in them. Examining the political aspirations we invest …
Always After: Desiring Queerness, Desiring Anthropology, Margot Weiss
Dec 2015
Always After: Desiring Queerness, Desiring Anthropology, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Queer, from its start, was meant to point beyond or beside identity—specifically gay and lesbian—and instead signify transgression of, resistance to, or exclusion from normativity, especially but not exclusively heteronormativity. But for all this, queer has never quite moved beyond identity. And queer has not quite been the site of resistance we had hoped, as the story of queer studies’ academic institutionalization might portend. Still, I am not writing a eulogy for queer. Instead, in this Retrospectives essay, I resist finding—if only to lose—a new proper object of queer anthropology and suggest, rather, that it is the frustration of …
Queer Precarity And The Myth Of Gay Affluence, Margot Weiss, Amber Hollibaugh
Dec 2014
Queer Precarity And The Myth Of Gay Affluence, Margot Weiss, Amber Hollibaugh
Margot Weiss
This essay begins to explore and articulate the concept of queer precarity. Queer precarity emphasizes the particular vulnerabilities of LGBT, queer, and GNC (gender non-conforming) people to the current economic transformations. Contrary to the myth of gay affluence, research from at least the mid-1990s shows that queer and gender non-conforming people are more vulnerable to poverty than their straight and cisgendered male or female counterparts. Yet this myth is sustained by the mainstream LGBT movement and too often shared by the progressive and activist labor movement. It is a particularly destructive myth for labor organizers because LGBT/Q people make up …
Bdsm (Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadomasochism), Margot Weiss
Dec 2014
Bdsm (Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadomasochism), Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
BDSM is the consensual exchange of power for pleasure. BDSM is an acronym made up of three term-sets: bondage and discipline (B&D), domination and submission (D/s), and sadomasochism (SM, S/M, or S&M). Although practices similar to those in contemporary BDSM communities have existed in most places and times, BDSM communities are a phenomenon of industrialized capitalist societies.
Queer Economic Justice: Desire, Critique, And The Practice Of Knowledge, Margot Weiss
Dec 2014
Queer Economic Justice: Desire, Critique, And The Practice Of Knowledge, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
This essay explores the political dreams we invest in radical sexualities and why we might want to find liberation, specifically economic justice, in radical sexualities. In a time of ongoing neoliberalization of knowledge, where what might appear to be radical sexual difference is all too easily absorbed into multicultural tolerance, I argue that the desire for sex to be liberatory indexes a more social desire for transformation. Taking up the recent turn away from critique in both queer studies and anthropology, I argue that we need critique now more than ever—an immanent critique that implicates both objects and subjects in …
Interview With Margot Weiss In Critical Lede Podcast, Margot Weiss
Oct 2013
Interview With Margot Weiss In Critical Lede Podcast, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Podcast: Episode 130 - Interview with Margot Weiss We talk with Margot Weiss (Wesleyan) about BDSM, pleasure and neoliberalism in her new book Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality.
“Margot Weiss Talks Bdsm And Sexuality.” Interview By Yasmin Nair In Windy City Times., Margot Weiss
Sep 2013
“Margot Weiss Talks Bdsm And Sexuality.” Interview By Yasmin Nair In Windy City Times., Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss' book, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality ( Duke University Press, 2011 ) has become a fixture in several ongoing conversations about the BDSM community. It received the 2012 Ruth Benedict Book Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards.
“On Marriage Equality” (Review Of Jay Cee Whitehead's The Nuptial Deal: Same-Sex Marriage And Neo-Liberal Governance [University Of Chicago Press, 2011]), Margot Weiss
Dec 2012
“On Marriage Equality” (Review Of Jay Cee Whitehead's The Nuptial Deal: Same-Sex Marriage And Neo-Liberal Governance [University Of Chicago Press, 2011]), Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Jaye Cee Whitehead’s book The Nuptial Deal is a sociological study of a marriage equality organization (given the pseudonym Marriage Rights Now, or MRN) in the western United States
’Reinvigorating The Queer Political Imagination’: A Roundtable With Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, And Karma Chávez Of Against Equality, Margot Weiss
Nov 2012
’Reinvigorating The Queer Political Imagination’: A Roundtable With Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, And Karma Chávez Of Against Equality, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss talked with Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, and Karma Chávez, three members of Against Equality, a queer online archive, publishing, and arts collective that challenges the political vision of mainstream gay and lesbian politics—especially inclusion in marriage, the U.S. military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. They have three anthologies: Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, and Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You.
Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Margot Weiss
Nov 2012
Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss talked to Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about the academic appropriation of activist intellectual labor and the hierarchies of intellectual work inside and outside the university. Sycamore is a writer, editor of several books including That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull, 2004, 2008), Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal, 2007), and Why Are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (AK Press, 2012), queer activist, artist, filmmaker, and critic.
“Bdsm And Feminism: Notes On An Impasse”, Margot Weiss
May 2012
“Bdsm And Feminism: Notes On An Impasse”, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Blog post that reflects on the current impasse in the debate between sex-positive and sex-negative, or pro-BDSM and anti-BDSM, feminism. This debate is due for an overhaul--I hope that recasting it might clear a path toward a more productive discussion about the feminist politics of desire.
The Epistemology Of Ethnography: Method In Queer Anthropology, Margot D. Weiss
Dec 2010
The Epistemology Of Ethnography: Method In Queer Anthropology, Margot D. Weiss
Margot Weiss
This essay explores methodological dilemmas in queer anthropology by reviewing three recent queer ethnographies: Mary Gray's Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America; Mark Padilla's Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic; and Gloria Wekker's The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. The essay aims to illuminate the epistemology of queer studies more broadly by focusing on a key paradox of ethnographic method: the binary of theory and data that is simultaneously made and unmade in ethnographic research and writing. In a newly transnational queer studies, ethnography …
Techniques Of Pleasure: Bdsm And The Circuits Of Sexuality, Margot Weiss
Dec 2010
Techniques Of Pleasure: Bdsm And The Circuits Of Sexuality, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Techniques of Pleasure is a vivid portrayal of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pansexual BDSM (SM) community. Margot Weiss conducted ethnographic research at dungeon play parties and at workshops on bondage, role play, and flogging, and she interviewed more than sixty SM practitioners. She describes a scene devoted to a form of erotic play organized around technique, rules and regulations, consumerism, and self-mastery. Challenging the notion that SM is inherently transgressive, Weiss links the development of commodity-oriented sexual communities and the expanding market for sex toys to the eroticization of gendered, racialized, and national inequalities. She analyzes the politics of …
Bondage And Barbeques, Margot D. Weiss
Dec 2010
Bondage And Barbeques, Margot D. Weiss
Margot Weiss
Interview in Method Magazine
Neoliberalism At Play: An Interview With Margot D. Weiss, Margot Weiss
Sep 2010
Neoliberalism At Play: An Interview With Margot D. Weiss, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
Interview at Trikster: Nordic Queer Journal Blog
Kink On Tap: Sexuality Netcast, Margot Weiss
Mar 2010
Kink On Tap: Sexuality Netcast, Margot Weiss
Margot Weiss
No abstract provided.
Gay Shame And Bdsm Pride: Neoliberalism, Privacy, And Sexual Politics, Margot D. Weiss
Dec 2007
Gay Shame And Bdsm Pride: Neoliberalism, Privacy, And Sexual Politics, Margot D. Weiss
Margot Weiss
This essay contrasts two contemporary activist groups: Gay Shame San Francisco, which seeks to disrupt homonormative lesbian and gay activism by challenging policing and gentrification; and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which disseminates a public image of BDSM, leather, and kinky practitioners as suburban minivan drivers who “look and dress like your neighbors.” Margot Weiss argues that neoliberalism’s relegation of sexuality into the realm of the private renders even kinky sexual practices like BDSM normative—kink-normative, if not homonormative—by detaching potentially disruptive sexual practices from any form of radical or progressive—public—politics.
