What is VPN? A Virtual Private Network (commonly referred to as VPN) is a “network technology that creates a secure network connection over a public network such as the internet or a private network owned by a service provider.” Basically, a VPN is a group of computers that network ‘privately’ together over the internet –…
Check your Privilege: What does it mean when someone remarks on your ‘privilege’ or asks you to ‘check your privilege’? Privilege in this instance refers to the multiple ways that institutions and society automatically favor you as a result of your race, class, gender, sexuality and other classifications based on systems of oppression. It is…
Homonationalism Jasbir Puar’s book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times introduces readers to the notion of homonationalism which is a coupling of Lisa Duggan’s Homonormativity. Homonationalism however differs in that it is poststructural critique of nationalism and develops a conceptual framework to analyze and understand how “acceptance” and “tolerance” of lesbians and gay men becomes…
Homonormativity Homonormativity was first coined by Lisa Duggan in her work The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism where she describes “the new homonormativity – it is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions [such as gay marriage or the right to serve openly in the military] – but upholds…
Gender Performativity Post-structuralist feminist philosopher Judith Butler first used the term gender performativity in her work Gender Trouble (1990). Butler states that gender, which is a socially constructed idea, is a continuous performance of the mythical notions of what constitutes male and female gender identities. Butler points out that “the body is only known through…
Biopower and Biopolitics The French philosopher, social theorist and historian Michel Foucault, is concerned with how modern society is controlled, subjugated and regulated through “biopower”. Biopower is a complex social theory that examines the strategies and mechanisms by which society is organized and managed through an authoritative regime of power, knowledge, and systems of subjugation.…
What is Intersectionality? Intersectionality is a concept coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. It is commonly used in critical theory to illustrate how different forms of discriminationatory and oppressive institutions (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ageism, ableism, xenophobia, etc..) are interconnected and and cannot be analyzed and examined in vacuum of…