I'm feeling that I'm at this point now, where my journey is starting to take me to solid ground, like I'm in a place where I know my needs are more congruent with what I live, and that I can introspect about things outside of my core intimate physical romantic emotional needs and consider other aspects of how I want to go forward in my path. I've had a vision building in my head for a while and I think it's starting to take shape and come into more focus. I am starting to seriously consider going back for my PhD. I have always believed eventually I would do it, but I wanted to have a clear vision of what I would research. And I think I know now that I want to study Queer Rhetoric. Rhetoric is my academic area, and I've always known I wanted to get deep into some area in that field. I've been thinking for the last year or so that this is my path, looking at how queer culture is represented in the larger culture in media and language. Of course my research would have to be more specific than that and I need to consider more sharply defining it. I like personal narratives and that may play a part for me. One thing that triggered this thought strongly was, wandering around the LGBT centre yesterday when I was locking up after my group finished, and I came across this massive stack of Gay magazine issues from the 1970s. I was just in total awe and all I wanted to do was get on the floor and pore through these magazines. How were people talking about being queer in these papers? About their identity, about the community? How has that changed? How did the queer community represent itself, what language was used to indicate subtle and not so subtle messages? Ah... I've got the bug to go back to study. I have another thing I'm tossing around in my head... I've been thinking of writing a book, about my experiences coming out, my journey. But I also want to engage in something related to all the campy sci fi I've always been really into. The latter aspect of that is less fully formed. Still throwing these thoughts around... it will be some time before I start on these things I think, I want to do careful planning and preparation in terms of finances, and proper timing. It's exciting to be in this place in my journey.
Hmm just thinking, maybe something related to the way people represent their sexual and gender identity, overlap in these areas. Much of the more modern thought leans towards separating sexuality and gender, but I know from personal experience that my gender expression and sexuality have a lot of overlap, it would be just amazing to study that more deeply.
It's always such encouraging to hear about the goodness in people's lives after they emerge on the other side to speak. That all sounds awesome and I'd love to read more about how queer culture has evolved.
That sounds fascinating. For me, I would love to delve into the culture from late 70s/early 80s. It was a formative time for me and resulted in my closeting myself.
I think this would be fascinating, especially now as we see more queer culture being brought into the mainstream media. Lesbians in Hallmark commercials as a random example. At times it is almost like the media is trying to pat themselves on the back for being inclusive, but are their intentions really ratings based? Or are we seeing a change in guard as the generation shift occurs and younger generations are becoming more accepting of queer culture? And if there is a shift happening, when did it start? What was the turning point and how is that represented in media? Ok hurry and write your thesis, I want answers.
I'm really excited by this idea of research, I think it will be really rewarding. I'mgay - I think that I have a similar personal interest in the research I want to do, my field is very interested in delving into symbols and expression and representation. I think this thought about how gender and sexuality interplay is extraordinarily fascinating to me because it's so much a part of my experience. I'm really excited to look at the way people express who they are and read and read and read and write and write and write about it. I can't think of anything more fascinating. Neonsocks, all of those questions are really fascinating to me as well. I'd like to talk about the queer representation that's only now starting to emerge more strongly in media, basically going beyond gay males and looking at butch lesbian expression, transmasculine expression, transwomen's representation and so on.
I knew you'd find the path for you. Go for it. I think you outta do them both. Doesn't have to be at the same time of course, just like the rest of your journey one step at a time
I find interesting the relationship between discourse and empowerment. In the political arena, that which cannot be articulated into words simply does not exist. Therefore LGBT experience, in spite of subjectively real, was a lot less visible and empowered than now. Its fascinating to see how this evolved, through interaction, a whole culture and language took shape and now almost any young LGBT has the conceptual tools to make sense and confidently communicate their lived experience in an empowered and self-confidend manner. Reading stuff on EC is almost like learning a new language in which its easier to understand what you are feeling and how to communicate it, but also, this language bounds the community toguether and helps it to fight, survive and hopefully thrive in an adverse heteronormative environment.