Abstract
Almost twenty years since Lisa Duggan coined the term ‘homonormativity’, this chapter provides a critical overview of this concept. In doing so, it also recontextualises the rise of homonormativity within a British context. This process involves identifying the relationship between British lesbian and gay politics and the broader political landscape of the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter also points to some of the critical antecedents that Duggan drew inspiration from in her development of a theory of homonormativity.
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Notes
- 1.
Susan Stryker (2008) writes of a prior use of the term ‘homonormativity’ by Trans activists working and living in San Francisco in the 1990s. The term was deployed as a method for identifying the dominance of gender normativity in constructions of both heterosexuality and homosexuality.
- 2.
ACTUP—The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—is a grassroots direct action group, originally formed in New York in 1987.
- 3.
The official theme tune to Labour’s 1997 election campaign was titled ‘Things can only get better’. The song was originally written and performed by D:Ream, a Northern Irish music group that topped the UK singles charts with the song in 1994.
- 4.
The LGBTQ campaign group affiliated to the UK’s Conservative party.
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Mowlabocus, S. (2021). Contextualising Homonormativity. In: Interrogating Homonormativity . Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87070-6_2
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