|
Breeders, queers and grad students >> Concordia prepares to host a major conference on sexuality by JOHN CUSTODIO
Anthropologists, philosophers, historians, architects and geographers, as well as art, literature, film and television critics--even a phys. ed. professor from the University of Toronto--will come from all over the world to attend panel discussions and lectures with titles ranging from the tame ("Race and the Construction of Sexualities") to the titillating ("Outta My Endzone: Sport and the Territorial Anus").
"Sex on the Edge" may sound like a sassy title for yet another "queer" conference, but those involved insist that it's not. "I think the name of the conference signals a new level of sophistication in the way sexuality is being thought about in the academy," says Chuck Kleinhans, who teaches radio, television and film at Northwestern University. "People have absorbed the lessons of the feminist and gay and lesbian movements, and are moving beyond the specificity of those frameworks." Kleinhans' own lecture is part of a larger panel discussion entitled, "Marketing Porn." "I'm really interested in the effect that video has had on pornography, not just in terms of aesthetics, but also with regards to the kinds of markets it now caters to, and maybe even fosters." Kleinhans notes, for example, how various specific fetishes are turning into demographic segments. "I like 'Sex on the Edge,'" says Marcie Frank, a professor in Concordia's English department who also helped to organize the conference. "It evokes marginality without using the actual word. It allows you to think about issues of sexuality without necessarily being ethnographic about it." More than just queers Without being specifically "queer," in other words? "Well, yes," says Neil Hartlen, a graduate student in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, "but that's a good move. It means the queer stuff doesn't get ghettoized." Hartlen's fears may, however, have no foundation: at this point, it's fair to ask whether queer issues are still being ghettoized, or even if queer issues are still on the cutting edge of sexuality. In some ways, "Queer Studies" have become central to the higher learning experience. If conservative critics like Roger Kimball (author of Tenured Radicals) or Harold Bloom (The Western Canon) are to be believed, queers have all but taken over the academy. Frank, however, says that in some disciplines it's difficult not to address sexuality. "I don't get much institutional resistance [anymore]," she says, "but it's sometimes difficult for me to convey to students the importance of sexuality as a matter of interpretive concern. "I teach a course in Restoration and 18th-Century Literature, which is full of rather obvious sexual double entendres--but when I explain their significance, I feel like I also have to explain that I'm not sex obsessed, the texts are." For Kleinhans, too, issues of sexuality are unavoidable. "They're central to my avant-garde film course and I've taught hard-core pornography in my documentary film course," he says, laughing, "but if I didn't have tenure ...." That's a sentiment Hartlen, who teaches undergraduate courses in film and literature, understands very well: "As safe a haven as my university is, I still feel I have to be careful. I do police myself." Gay movement gone conservative For Rutgers University professor Michael Warner, a proud "sex radical" who will be delivering one of the conference's keynote addresses, academia is still the only safe haven. "It's the only place where you can speak frankly, and critically, about issues of sexuality." Warner, who helped to found Sex Panic!, a direct-action group that fights repressive sex legislation and crackdowns on sex clubs and bathhouses, is critical of what he sees as an increasingly conservative gay movement. "If you look at what the major gay organizations are doing, or at the gay lifestyle magazines, you would come to the conclusion--and rightly so--that the movement isn't about sex at all: it's about a 'sensibility,' or about 'identity,' or the right to marry," Warner says. "You don't see any kind of principled defense of sex, of our right to sexual pleasure, of our right to build cultural institutions around those pleasures. Sex is either played down or attacked outright, by so-called leaders." Warner encourages anyone complacent about "progress" to go to the Cruising for Sex Web site (www.cruisingforsex.com). "It's where you can find out about places to cruise, but more than anything it serves to warn people about where not to go if they want to avoid police entrapment. In many ways, things haven't changed since the 1950s. Society is still quite puritanical about sex. We're punitive and prosecutorial." That's a situation Warner hopes conferences like Sex on the Edge can address, but he's skeptical. "There's some truth to the accusation that academics are only talking to each other. There isn't really enough communication between the academy and the movements--and neither of those is really in touch with the sexual culture of bathhouses, sex clubs and bars. Why, for example, isn't there any link between this conference and the Black & Blue festival, which I understand is happening the same weekend?" "Some of us wanted more community participation," says Waugh, "but in the end we had only enough funding and resources for an academic conference. Maybe next time we'll put on a more inclusive event." Sex on the Edge begins Friday, October 9 at 9am, with keynote addresses at 7pm Keynote lectures are free and open to the public; otherwise, registration charges apply. For more information, contact 288-9008
|
In an era when gay pride marches attract thousands and pornography gets made by feminists, what is the cutting edge of sex? That question is the impetus behind this weekend's upcoming Sex on the Edge conference at Concordia University.
The conference, held in part to bring attention to Concordia's new Interdisciplinary Studies Minor Programme in Sexuality, is an ambitious attempt to gather the academy's best minds on the topic under one roof. "The idea was to gather the people who are doing the most interesting new work in sexuality studies," says Tom Waugh, a professor in the Cinema department and one of the conference's organizers.