American Studies Commons^™

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

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.

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.

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.