Leila J. Rupp

Drag Queens and Drag Kings: The Difference Gender Makes

In this article, we use case studies of two different drag performance collectives, the 801 Girls, a drag queen troupe in Key West, Florida, and the Disposable Boy Toys, a political feminist collective in Santa Barbara, California, to explore the differences between drag queens and drag kings. We argue that, despite their divergent routes to performing drag and the different contexts and styles of their shows, a similar critique of hegemonic gender and heteronormativity emerges from their performances. As the first systematic comparison of drag queens and drag kings, this article enhances our understanding of the gendered dynamics of drag.

Queer Women in the Hookup Scene Beyond the Closet

The college hookup scene is a profoundly gendered and heteronormative sexual field. Yet the party and bar scene that gives rise to hookups also fosters the practice of women kissing other women in public, generally to the enjoyment of male onlookers, and sometimes facilitates threesomes involving same-sex sexual behavior between women. In this article, we argue that the hookup scene serves as an opportunity structure to explore same-sex attractions and, at least for some women, to later verify bisexual, lesbian, or queer sexual identities. Based on quantitative and qualitative data and combining queer theory and identity theory, we offer a new interpretation of women’s same-sex practices in the hookup culture. Our analysis contributes to gender theory by demonstrating the utility of identity theory for understanding how non-normative gender and sexual identities are negotiated within heteronormatively structured fields.

PERFORMING PROTEST: DRAG SHOWS AS TACTICAL REPERTOIRE OF THE GAY AND LESBIAN MOVEMENT

This paper presents a theoretical definition of protest that overcomes the bifurcation of politics and culture in mainstream social movement research. The model is grounded in a study of drag performances, which have a long history in same-sex communities as vehicles for expressing gay identity, creating and maintaining solidarity, and staging political resistance. Extending Tilly’s concept of repertoires of contention, we propose the term “tactical repertoires” to refer to protest episodes, and we identify three elements of all tactical repertoires: contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. We combine social constructionist perspectives on gender and sexuality, the social movement literature, and writings in performance studies to understand how drag performances function as tactical repertoires of the gay and lesbian movement. We argue that because they are entertaining, drag shows illuminate gay life for mainstream audiences and provide a space for the construction of collective identities that confront and rework gender and sexual boundaries.

German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History

This book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on middle and upper class German women and the second on working class women. The book addresses a range of important topics including growing up female in 19th century Germany, the impact of agrarian change on womens work and child care, female political opposition in pre-1849 Germany, womens role in working class families in the 1890s, womens education and reading habits, and Jewish women and assimilation.

Sexual Fluidity “Before Sex”

This article considers the concept of sexual fluidity—in the sense of changing sexual desires and identities and lack of fit between desire and behavior and behavior and identity—historically and cross-culturally. Before the formulation of the concept of a homosexual identity, sex was sometimes so defined by the participation of a penis that what women might do with their bodies did not count as sex. Sometimes sex between women was unimportant given the cultural imperative to marry a man and bear children, and sometimes sex between women could be accommodated, even useful, in a heterosexually organized society. In all of these cases, sexual fluidity characterizes the behavior, if not the desires (about which we cannot really know) of women who did not have available to them the identity of bisexual or, for that matter, any clearly defined sexual identity. The history of desire, sex, and love between women suggests that women’s sexual fluidity is nothing new and should be understood in the context of social arrangements that facilitate same-sex sexuality in a heteronormative context.

REFLECTIONS ON TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN'S HISTORY

American womens history, like other areas of American history, has tended to neglect the twentieth century in favor of its predecessor, the nineteenth. The nineteenth century emerges from historical scholarship as a dynamic period in which the process of industrialization transformed womens work and family roles. Research on nineteenth-century American women has shed light on a variety of topics previously unexplored and, more important, has led the way in defining the themes and conceptual frameworks of womens history. Scholarship on the twentieth century, on the other hand, has been scanty and has not yet identified the major trends and developments that have shaped the lives of women in contemporary society. But the body of literature on American women in the twentieth century is growing, and we need to think about the direction it is taking. One thing immediately noticeable is a lack of continuity between the two centuries as they emerge from historical writing. It is as if the First World War destroyed the old Victorian world a created a new one in which women went to work in department stores and offices, forsook their homosocial world for a heterosocial one, and turned their backs on feminism. The myth of the New Woman continues to exercise its tenacious influence on our thinking about twentieth-century womens history, and it is time that we realized what the New Woman shared with her nineteenth-century sisters. At the same time, historical scholarship has too often applied concepts shaped by nineteenth-century experiences to the twentieth without considering the differences between the two periods. We can only hope to create for the twentieth century the sort of rich materials that already exist for the nineteenth if we understand the nineteenth-century base of many of the existing concepts while using them to develop appropriate conceptual frameworks for the twentieth. This essay attempts to apply some of the approaches and concepts that have emerged in research and writing on nineteenth-century American womens history to the twentieth century. It focuses on three particular areas that have proven central to womens history: work, womens culture, and feminism. The impact of industrialization on womens lives is a central theme in

Wartime violence against women and solidarity

At the Non‐governmental Organization Forum of the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, in September 1995, women from around the world came together and decried the diverse and gender‐specific violence that afflicts women everywhere. From systematic rape as a weapon of war to culturally sanctioned forms of domestic violence, women suffer from gendered violence that increasingly dominates discussions of womens solidarity across national and cultural borders. Yet violence against women is not new nor is the recognition that such violence might promote womens international solidarity. In fact, when we explore the first wave of the international womens movement, from its origins in the late 19th century through the ebb of the Second World War, we can detect the early murmurings of women against the rape of women in wartime.

Zur Organisationsgeschichte der internationalen Frauenbewegung vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

1975 verkündeten die Vereinten Nationen (UNO) das Jahrzehnt der Frau. Damit richtete sich die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit auf die Unterdrückung von Frauen überall in der Welt; es war auch gleichzeitig der Beginn einer weltweiten Initiative, internationale Frauenkonferenzen in Mexico City (1975), Kopenhagen (1980) und Nairobi (1985) zu organisieren. Doch die internationale Frauenbewegung ist kein neues Phänomen: bereits 1975 konnte sie auf eine fast hundertjährige Geschichte zurückblicken. Der Zweite Weltkrieg hat eine gravierende Unterbrechung aller Organisationsbestrebungen über die nationalen Grenzen hinweg zur Folge gehabt und war für das Ende der ersten Phase der Frauenbewegung und die lange Pause vor Beginn der zweiten verantwortlich. Die Bestrebungen der internationalen Bewegungen, das muß man immer wieder betonen, gingen nicht grundsätzlich konform mit den Zielen der nationalen Bewegungen. Der Kalte Krieg, das Aufkommen der nationalen Liberalisierungsbestrebungen und das Entstehen und Wiedererwachen nebeneinander bestehender nationaler Frauenverbände veränderten ganz entscheidend die Voraussetzungen für die internationale Bewegung, die in den 1970ern weltweit wirksam wurde. Und doch hat die Bewegung der zweiten Phase ihre Wurzeln in internationalen Bestrebungen, die im 19. Jahrhundert ihren Ursprung hatten. Ich möchte hier die erste Phase der internationalen Frauenbewegung umreißen. Im späten 19. Jahrhundert hatten Frauen damit begonnen, sich über die nationalen Grenzen hinweg zu organisieren. So entstanden die unterschiedlichsten Gruppierungen, die zusammenarbeiteten und miteinander konkurrierten, und um 1920 herum zeichneten sich neue Strukturen ab, in denen es darum ging, etwas Grenzübergreifendes zu organisieren. Obwohl die ersten offiziellen Kontakte von Frauen verschiedener Nationen auf Tagungen stattfanden, die nichts mit bereits vorhandenen Gruppierungen zu tun hatten (Klejman 1989; Wikander 1992), war die Gründung von Organisationen doch ein Zeichen dafür, daß die Frauenbewegung im Begriff war, sich zu institutionalisieren oder, mit den Worten derjenigen, die sich mit dem Thema der Ressourcen-Mobilisierung beschäftigen, zu einer sozialen Bewegung als eigenständiger politischer Organisationsform zu werden (McCarthy und Zald 1977). Diese Betrachtungsweise der sozialen Bewegungen mißt den offiziellen Organisationen ein besonderes Gewicht bei, da nur durch sie

Rose Manus (1881–1942): the international life and legacy of a Jewish Dutch feminist

This book does several things: for those unfamiliar with Rosa Manus, it introduces her as a central figure during the heyday of the pre-Second World War international women’s movement; for those fa...

For Better—and—For Worse

Sociologist Verta Taylor and historian Leila Rupp, who wed in 2008 after 30 years together, complicate the debate between queer critics and supporters of same-sex marriage over the consequences of marriage equality. Sociologist and gender studies scholar Suzanna Walters explores how the framework of tolerance—and the marriage mania that depends on it—actively undermines robust queer inclusion and freedom.