The queer logics of sex/desire and the ‘missing’ discourse of gender

Abstract

In this article I seek to expose the masculinism subtending a strain of queer known as anti-social queer theory. I argue that anti-social queer theory privileges sexuality at the expense of gender. More specifically, anti-social queer theory exalts certain masculine modes of (queer) sexual trangression, which, although concealed through the rhetoric of trangression/subversion, depends on and works through normative ideologies of gender and sexuality. I contend that anti-social queer theory reinforces binarized gender, devaluing in turn non-phallic modes of desire. Through in-depth interviews with lesbian/queer sadomasochists, I show that desire/sexuality is fundamentally dependent on gender and the body. Additionally, narratives express how bodily stability is generative of desire. I conclude by arguing that sexuality scholars must incorporate gender identity formations into theorizations of sexuality.