Tag Archives: Queer: A Graphic History

Blurb

Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel.

From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.

Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what’s ‘normal’ – Alfred Kinsey’s view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler’s view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we’re invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media.

Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.

My Review

Happy New Year. Let’s hope 2021 is better than 2020.

I treat myself to this book because I had the spare cash and it has been on my wish list for a while. It arrived this morning and I’ve spent a few hours today reading it. I rather enjoyed it. This book is an illustrated introduction to Queer Theory and its history from about the early twentieth century. Introduction is the key word here, if you know something of the subject already it would probably seem simplistic, but for those of us with a bit of amorphous knowledge but nothing specific, things we’ve seen online but haven’t entirely understood, this book is excellent. The emphasis on questioning binaries (man/woman, homosexual/heterosexual), the fixed nature of gender, sex and sexuality, the cultural context of same, was fascinating, and ties in with thoughts I’d already had.

I must recommend this book to people interested in the subject but without the formal academic background usually needed to understand this sort of thing.