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…
As so many of us focus our work around online campaigns it’s really useful to know how social media drives norms (or doesn’t….). Here’s a great article from Scientific American that might help inform some of your future plans! Also worth reading on the same topic is the Washington Post’s article “More than 26 million people have…
From The Advocate In 1971, the day before the U.K. Gay Liberation Front planned to hold London’s first official Pride march, half a dozen radical drag activists took it upon themselves to run a dress rehearsal. It was a resounding success, one which saw them chased down Oxford Street by the metropolitan police. Over a…
Check out this interesting article about what messages our opponents use. They really know no limits. This is definitely “going too far”. But beyond outrage, what messaging can we oppose to this fear-mongering tactics. Research shows that upfront combatting this argument would just make things worse. Campaigns would be better off engaging the voters on…
Safety and Security Online Browsing and Communicating Securely Online When you’re signing into any website, always make sure to check that you’re URL begins with https:// (and not just http://). This signals that your website connection is secure, encrypted, and less prone to unwanted snooping, tampering, or identity theft online. However, while many websites are…