Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:23:20.726Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

44 - Quantifying Sex

from How to Recognize the Queer Past before (and during) the Advent of Medicalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2024

Benjamin Kahan
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Get access

Summary

Quantification can be a double-edged sword. Converting lived experience into quantitative data can be reductive, coldly condensing complex thoughts, feelings, and actions into numbers. But it can also be a powerful tool to abstract from isolated instances into patterns and groups, providing empirical evidence of systemic injustice and grounds for collectivity. Queer lives and literatures have contended with both these qualities of quantification. Statistics have been used to pathologize queer desire as deviant from the norm, but they have also made it clear how prevalent queer people are, enabling collective action. Likewise for queer literature, which has sometimes regarded quantification as its antithesis, and other times as a prime representational resource. Across the history of queer American literature this dialectical tension between quantification as reductive and resource has played out in various ways, in conjunction with the histories of science, sexuality, and literary style. This chapter covers the history of queer quantification in literature from the singular sexological case study through the gay minority to contemporary queerness trying to transcend the countable.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Quantifying Sex
  • Edited by Benjamin Kahan, Louisiana State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
  • Online publication: 17 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108918725.048
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Quantifying Sex
  • Edited by Benjamin Kahan, Louisiana State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
  • Online publication: 17 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108918725.048
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Quantifying Sex
  • Edited by Benjamin Kahan, Louisiana State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
  • Online publication: 17 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108918725.048
Available formats
×