Book Review of Jason Orne's Boystown (original) (raw)
Related papers
Querying’ the Limits of Queering Boys Through the Contested Discourses on Sexuality
Sexuality and Culture, 2008
Presentations of boy’s sexuality within man–boy sexual relationships have shifted considerably over the past three decades. We document this through analyzing three very different constituencies: ‘boylover’ (adult men sexually attracted to boys) activist movements, three research case studies, and male survivors of abuse. We examine the specific ways boy’s sexuality has been constructed within each of these positions, how these have changed over this period, and what insights all this can shed on wider social and cultural (re)conceptions on age, gender, and sexuality. Studying these diverse perspectives provides a series of contrasting assumptions and frameworks which will yield invaluable insights on wider transformations in the production of narratives on child and intergenerational sexualities. We hope to illuminate this through drawing out the complex interplays involving power dynamics and fluctuations in the epistemological hierarchy delineating boy’s sexuality (in terms of more normative and transgressive forms this may take). We conclude this critical engagement with a discussion of the likely impact any ‘queering’ of, or fractures in, age/generational boundaries might have for the future narrating of boy’s sexual stories within man–boy sexual relationships.
From Bad Boy to Dead Boy: Homophobia, Adolescent Problem Fiction, and Male Bodies that Matter
Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 2006
Drawing on the theories of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Mieke Bal, this paper examines two Canadian young adult novels—Diana Wieler’s /Bad Boy/ (1989) and Brian Payton’s /Hail Mary Corner/ (2001)—in which a gay male supporting character is used as a catalyst for a heterosexual protagonist’s gendered development. Although both straight heroes earn growth and forgiveness in what appear to be “satisfying” resolutions, the gay friends they reject remain trapped within a discourse of homophobia that is not adequately overturned. The ritualized rejection of the gay male body thus becomes a regulatory practice, not only for the supporting characters but potentially for the adolescent readers that these texts address.
Renold, E. (2007) Primary school ‘studs’: (de)constructing young boys' heterosexual masculinities,
Research has yet to fully explore younger boys’ heterosexual cultures beyond an awareness that heterosexual performances are integral to the production of a “real boy.” Drawing upon an ethnographic study of boys’ (and girls’) gender and sexual relations in two contrasting primary schools, this article argues that while most ten- and eleven-year-old boys experience the boyfriend/girlfriend culture as an emotional cocktail of fear and frustration, a minority of boys invest in a privileged hyperheterosexual masculinity as the “studs” of their classes and schools. Detailed case studies illustrate the different ways in which discourses of “heterosexuality” can be drawn upon at this age and offer some insight into the ways in which masculinity, (hetero)sexuality, childhood, and schooling intersect and are negotiated and experienced by preadolescent boys as they make sense of their emerging gender and sexual identities.
University of Michigan - Deep Blue, 2022
ix and the management here thinks I'm going to rob the place. Boystown is just not as much fun as it used to be. As he takes another sip of his drink and looks out the window at people passing by, he comments that "Boystown is just not my game anymore." Unknown to me at that time, the agglomeration of gay bars, clubs, and bathhouses with their rainbow flags, lights, and panoply of parties hide multiple structures of inequality that impact the costs of this leisure, who gains access, and how they are received. As Dex's comment reflects, both personal characteristics (such as age and race) and structural ones (such as convenience) influence the degree to which someone is successful within this neighborhood and these spaces. For some, Boystown represents a queer utopia and for others, a queer community deferred. Therefore, the guiding questions that began my study were: (1) who falls into the utopia versus deferred categories and (2) if queer men aren't frequenting Boystown, then where are they going? Over the next three and a half years, I addressed these questions by observing the various queer spaces around the city, both located within Boystown and outside of it. Within these spaces, I witnessed who used them and how to find out who was successful, where, and what they had to do in order to be successful. In talking with patrons, staff members, owners, visitors, and regulars, I learned how these queer spaces were not simply used for leisure, but to structure entire ways of organizing queer life in the city. In turn, this dictated how and with whom individuals interacted. The location of queer places helped guide the mechanisms queer men used to understand Chicago's queer sexual landscape and their own personal queer sexual map. Given this organization, it is unsurprising that when I gave queer men a map of Chicago, they were all too willing and able to circle, star, cross out, and highlight places they go, places they don't, neighborhoods they consider to be good, ones that are bad, and overall, their personal xix List of Appendices Appendix A: Map of Chicago……………………………………………………..
Journal of American Studies of Turkey, 2021
Published in 1982, Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story is a bildungsroman of a young boy remembering his past and sexual initiation. While the novel traces the narrator's experiences of growing into a young man, it also includes glimpses of gay men's experiences in the U.S during the mid-20 th century. This article attempts to analyze the character's journey of sexual discovery as part of his identity construction and details how this development of sexuality differs from the same-sex sexualities in the bildungsroman tradition. During his coming of age and self-growth process, the character's sexual discovery is affected by the presence of the father figure. Due to this figure, the protagonist becomes attracted to his first love, Kevin. In light of the theoretical framework on the bildungsroman, gay sexuality, masculinity, and the oedipal triangle, this article examines the way the main character's discovery of his attraction to Kevin is shaped by his relationship to his father. And this leads to the discovery of both himself and his sexuality during the process of transitioning from boyhood to gay manhood, where his sexuality becomes a part of his identity.