Jane Ward | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 15, 1973 |
| Spouse | Kat Ross |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of California Santa Barbara |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Feminist and Queer Studies |
Jane Ward is an American scholar,feminist,and author.
Jane Ward | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 15, 1973 |
| Spouse | Kat Ross |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of California Santa Barbara |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Feminist and Queer Studies |
Jane Ward is an American scholar,feminist,and author.
Ward is Professor and Chair of Feminist Studies at the University of California,Santa Barbara. [1] Ward received her PhD in sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2003.
Ward is known for her books The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (New York University Press,2020),a 2021 PROSE Award Winner, [2] and Not Gay:Sex Between Straight White Men (NYU Press,2015), [3] a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. [4] Ward's research has been featured in The New York Times , BBC , NPR , New York Magazine , The Guardian , Forbes , Salon , Newsweek , Huffington Post , Cosmopolitan ,and Vice . Her 2008 book Respectably Queer:Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations was named a favorite book of 2008 by The Progressive magazine. [5]
She lives in Southern California with her partner Kat Ross. Ward's published work focuses on a broad range of topics,from feminist pornography,queer parenting,and the racial politics of same-sex marriage,to the social construction of heterosexuality and whiteness.
Ward's first book,Respectably Queer,is based on her observations of three different queer organizations:the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center,Bienestar,and Los Angeles-Christopher Street West.[ citation needed ]
Ward's second book, Not Gay, received positive reviews from New York Magazine and many other outlets. Singal states "[Ward] shows that homosexual contact has been a regular feature of heterosexual life ever since the concepts of homo- and heterosexuality were first created—not just in prisons and frat houses and the military,but in biker gangs and even conservative suburban neighborhoods." [6]
In Not Gay,Ward examines same sex encounters between men who are considered to be heterosexual.[ citation needed ] Questions that frame her analysis include "does having sexual encounters with men automatically mean that men are gay or bisexual?" To answer such questions,she traces American history to the 1950s,examining same sex encounters such as those in public bathrooms. Ward also uses sociological,psychological,and historical research to link gender and sexuality to race,focusing on the perceived heterosexuality of white men who have sexual encounters with other white men. Ward's work in Not Gay presents a perspective on opposite couple attraction [7] and a new outlook on heterosexual masculinity. [8] In 2016,Ward published a feminist response to gay male critics of the book. [9] Not Gay was translated into German and published by Mannerschwarm Verlag in 2018. [10]
In 2020,Ward published her third book,entitled The Tragedy of Heterosexuality,winner of the 2021 PROSE Award in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology. [11] As described by a reviewer for The New York Times,“The Tragedy of Heterosexuality wastes absolutely no time getting to the point,but while many of the sentences (including the title) made me laugh out loud,it is at heart a somber,urgent academic examination of the many ways in which opposite-sex coupling can hurt the very individuals who cling to it most." [12]
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
Queer theory is the perspective that questions the perception that cisgender and heterosexual identities are in any sense “standard.” It revisits such fields as literary analysis, philosophy, and politics with a “queer” approach.
The sex-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that seeks to change cultural attitudes and norms around sexuality, promoting the recognition of sexuality as a natural and healthy part of the human experience and emphasizing the importance of personal sovereignty, safer sex practices, and consensual sex. It covers every aspect of sexual identity including gender expression, orientation, relationship to the body, relationship-style choice, and reproductive rights. Sex-positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, encouraging sexual pleasure and experimentation." It challenges societal taboos and aims to promote healthy and consensual sexual activities. The sex-positive movement also advocates for comprehensive sex education and safe sex as part of its campaign. The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.
"New Queer Cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.
Heteroflexibility is a form of a sexual orientation or situational sexual behavior characterized by minimal homosexual activity in an otherwise primarily heterosexual orientation, which may or may not distinguish it from bisexuality. It has been characterized as "mostly straight". Although sometimes equated with bi-curiosity to describe a broad continuum of sexual orientation between heterosexuality and bisexuality, other authors distinguish heteroflexibility as lacking the "wish to experiment with ... sexuality" implied by the bi-curious label. The corresponding situation in which homosexual activity predominates has also been described, termed homoflexibility.
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.
Jonathan Ned Katz is an American author of human sexuality who has focused on same-sex attraction and changes in the social organization of sexuality over time. His works focus on the idea, rooted in social constructionism, that the categories with which society describes and defines human sexuality are historically and culturally specific, along with the social organization of sexual activity, desire, relationships, and sexual identities.
A glory hole is a hole in a wall or partition, often between public lavatory cubicles or sex video arcade booths and lounges, for people to engage in sexual activity or observe the person on the opposite side.
Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
Bisexual erasure, also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics.
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, to more than one gender, or to both people of the same gender and different genders. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, which is also known as pansexuality.
Tamsin Elizabeth Wilton was an English lesbian activist, and the UK’s first Professor of Human Sexuality. She researched and wrote extensively about gay and lesbian health, the process of transitioning to lesbianism, and the marginalisation of lesbian issues within sexuality studies.
Queer heterosexuality is heterosexual practice or identity that is also controversially called queer. "Queer heterosexuality" is argued to consist of heterosexual, cisgender, and allosexual persons who show nontraditional gender expressions, or who adopt gender roles that differ from the hegemonic masculinity and femininity of their particular culture.
Judith G. Stacey is an author and Professor Emerita of Social and Cultural Analysis and Sociology at New York University. Her primary focus areas include gender, family, sexuality, feminist and queer theory, and ethnography. Her book Unhitched explores family configurations that deviate from the standard Western concept of "marriage", including polygamous families in South Africa, the Mosuo people in southwestern China, and intimacy and parenthood among gay men in Los Angeles, California. She has published many works. She is perhaps most known for her paper, co-authored with Timothy Biblarz, titled "(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?" This study found that children with gay or lesbian parents "are well-adjusted, have good levels of self-esteem and are as likely to have high educational attainments as children raised in more traditional heterosexual families."
Compulsory heterosexuality, often shortened to comphet, is the theory that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced upon people by a patriarchal and heteronormative society. The term was popularized by Adrienne Rich in her 1980 essay titled "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence". According to Rich, social science and literature perpetuate the societal belief that women in every culture are believed to have an innate preference for romantic and sexual relationships with men. She argues that women's sexuality towards men is not always natural but is societally ingrained and scripted into women. Comphet creates the belief that society is overwhelmingly heterosexual and delegitimizes queer identities. As a result, it perpetuates homophobia and legal inequity for the LGBTQ+ community.
Feminist views on sexuality widely vary. Many feminists, particularly radical feminists, are highly critical of what they see as sexual objectification and sexual exploitation in the media and society. Radical feminists are often opposed to the sex industry, including opposition to prostitution and pornography. Other feminists define themselves as sex-positive feminists and believe that a wide variety of expressions of female sexuality can be empowering to women when they are freely chosen. Some feminists support efforts to reform the sex industry to become less sexist, such as the feminist pornography movement.
Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men is a 2015 book by Jane Ward, in which the author details the phenomenon of straight white men seeking out sex with other straight men despite not identifying as gay, bisexual, or bi-curious.
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