Chapter 5 explores the common stereotype that LGBTQ+ people flaunt their sexuality, or behave sexually inappropriate in ways that heterosexual and cisgender people do not. This stereotype undergirds the rationale for recent anti-LGBTQ+ bills such as Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill and anti-transgender legislation which is part of the backlash against the progress of queer rights in the early 2000s. Various shortcuts in thinking that contribute to the reckless and false belief that queer people flaunt their sexuality are discussed. Lesbian and gay parenting and children of queer parents is discussed as well. Heterosexual privilege is examined. The empirical work on child sexual abuse is also considered. The chapter concludes with strategies to reduce heterosexism and homophobia.

As we’ve seen, bitch has been used against men for almost as long as it’s been used against women. Bitch is still thrown at men and women alike, but it’s used somewhat differently. Bitch can have positive connotations when a woman reclaims it, but when aimed at a man, bitch is rarely a compliment. While a bitch can be a strong woman, it usually means a weak man. But unlike powerful women who are hit with the word, men are targeted with bitch when they are considered to be powerless. Bitch likens a woman to a man, while it likens a man to a woman. It’s an emasculating insult that suggests he’s lacking in courage and strength. Bitch might also accuse him of being effeminate or gay. There are many different versions of the slur for a man – he’s a little bitch, someone’s bitch, a prison bitch, or he’s a son of a bitch.

This chapter explores male homoerotic desire, whether idealised, romanticised, visualised or physically enacted. Male homoerotic practices and relations have sometimes been structured around notions of difference between two males who were thought to be respectively masculine and feminine, active and passive, free and slave, or older and younger. The last pairing was particularly important in classical European antiquity where it was, typically, regarded as compatible with heterosexual marriage and reproduction. This should alert us to the fact that many societies across the globe have not viewed male homoerotic relations according to the set of sexualised identities that emerged from nineteenth century western medical science, and which have since been contested by gay liberationists and queer activists. Western imperial practice has produced an abundance of evidence concerning the legal and religious regulation of ‘sodomy’. This invites comparison with records from other cultures which have often been, in their various ways, more positive in their attitudes to same-sex desire. The chapter, therefore, includes a consideration of globally diverse patterns of male homoerotic relations that acknowledges the complexity of cultural responses to same-sex desire.

Bernstein was a larger-than-life figure on stage as conductor, composer, pianist, and media persona, and off stage, too, in his physicality, sociality, charisma, and sensuous engagement with the world. His artistic and celebrity status granted wide berth to Bernstein’s ‘bohemian’ sexual and relationship practices, but he was not exempt from contemporary social expectations and anxieties. Indeed, Bernstein’s life and career illustrate the pivotal effects of twentieth-century sociosexual norms and homophobia on US musical modernism. A gay man in a heterosexual marriage, Bernstein was both a victim and beneficiary, and a sometime agent, of homophobia. In Bernstein the forces of twentieth-century homophobia converged with talent, ambition, and repression, yielding momentous results for his family, intimates, colleagues, and rivals, and for US and international arts and culture. Bernstein’s life and career were fatefully shaped by prevailing social forms and mores, and ultimately his social and cultural influence would contribute to their reshaping.

This chapter studies the expression of queerness, gender and sexual identity, and diversity in comics and graphic novels. It identifies several stages in the history of the medium, from earlier coded or implicit representations of queer identities designed to circumvent the Comics Code Authority to increasingly and openly acknowledged visualizations of non-heteronormative subject matters in contemporary works. The chapter offers close readings of various coming-out narratives that use the graphic memoir form as a space for self-excavation and self-disclosure, drawing connections with a wider social of familial context (Howard Cruse, David Wojnarowicz, and especially Alison Bechdel, whose Fun Home catapulted queer graphic novels into the mainstream). It also contrasts the “normalization” approach of mainstream publishers, who focus on diversity and support equality by featuring queer characters in ensemble casts, albeit at the risk of presenting a superficial image of queerness, and the more exclusive focus of alternative publishers and individually produced comics-zines, more centered on personal experiences.

This chapter discusses the right to equality and non-discrimination as it is protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, other Council of Europe instruments, in EU law and in international instruments. Attention is paid to various non-discrimination concepts, such as indirect and direct discrimination, and to grounds of discrimination. In the final section, a short comparison between the different instruments is made.

While debates may rage around issues of sexuality, sexual identity and sexuality-based rights, if we are to believe what we hear from some of our political leaders and sections of the media, concerns over sexuality itself should be settled outside of schools. Sexuality, they would argue, is too mature, too controversial and quite simply a biological fact that has no relevance to schooling.However, disturbing stories and statistics point to the significant challenges faced by students, and these surely warrant attention.

With this in mind, this chapter examines some of the questions that often arise when talking about sexualities: Are gender and sexuality the same thing? Is sexuality ‘all about sex’?And what does school have to do with any of this? By unpacking some of the emergent literature in the field, the chapter will suggest that dominant discourses around sexualities ߝ in this case, heteronormativity ߝ are up for challenge.

Arguments about the pros and cons and possible effectiveness of face masks have occupied considerable space in specialist, medical venues such as peer-reviewed journals and science blogs as well as public forums such as mainstream media and social media – the latter attracting contributions from medical specialists and lay members of the public alike. The debate has often been heated, and there have also been reports of individuals resisting the stipulation to wear face masks in shops and on airplanes, at times leading to acts of physical violence. Drawing on the narrative paradigm, this chapter examines some of the arguments for and against face masks as articulated by a diverse range of individuals and constituencies, within and beyond the Anglophone and European world, and the justifications given in each case, as well as their underlying values and logics.

Even some entirely peaceful gay males feel so-called internalized homophobia towards gay males, including themselves. This is particularly so if their social context is anti-gay and they have not ‘come out’ publicly. For a tiny minority, feelings of shame and guilt might sometimes be assuaged by acting aggressively towards other gay males, which appears to be an example of what Freud termed ‘reaction formation’. Such combined lust-anger emotion appears to be at the basis of the killings by several men (described here), who exhibit sexual sadism. Some serial lust killers were rejected and taunted for being gay. This triggered mixed emotions towards their orientation and combined attraction and hatred towards other gays. The chapter describes several homosexual serial killers, all of whom targeted gay males or young men offering sexual services, often torturing them before killing. Most famous is John Wayne Gacy and most recently convicted is Bruce McArthur.

Nigeria remains a traditional culture, and religion is an inextricable part of society, permeating political, familial and socio-economic life. Young Nigerians are beginning to rebel against traditional roles. Empowered by the anonymity and strength in numbers that a megacity like Lagos provides, a growing feminist movement, led by young women, is seeking greater gender equality across work and family life. A small but vocal LBGTQ+ community is also emerging, particularly in the creative industries, and is using social media to speak out and challenge deeply rooted homophobic assumptions.

Nigeria remains a traditional culture, and religion is an inextricable part of society, permeating political, familial and socio-economic life. Young Nigerians are beginning to rebel against traditional roles. Empowered by the anonymity and strength in numbers that a megacity like Lagos provides, a growing feminist movement, led by young women, is seeking greater gender equality across work and family life. A small but vocal LBGTQ+ community is also emerging, particularly in the creative industries, and is using social media to speak out and challenge deeply rooted homophobic assumptions.

Chapter 5 attends to the notions of siblinghood between female friends or lovers of the same age group. Drawing on the idealized closeness and harmony afforded to uterine sisters, especially among the matrilenal Akan, a same-sex lover can be invoked as a sibling in order to front a non-sexual connection. Among insiders however, claims to being “of the same blood” signal emotional and sexual attachments. Thereby everyday practices such as bathing, washing, and eating together over extended periods of time emerge as the crucial markers of these familial intimacies. Conversely, it examines the spectre of incest that lingers among same-sex lovers who do share lineage ties and are thus both metaphorically and genealogically related. The chapter argues that female friends who raise children together, take care of each other’s elders, and build joint networks that include male husbands and relatives, do much of the work afforded to (queer) families.

This essay attends to representations of sexual themes and desires in Caribbean Literatures. It traces the emergence and development of a body of writings that propel both a sense and a politics of place while enacting epistemological and ontological ruptures of the Judeo-Western heteronorms that often frame Caribbean discourses and narratives. We argue that through their particular literary remittances of plural sexual subjectivity to the public archive of Caribbean historical memory, these writers engage in a shared advocacy for the interrogation, removal and dismantling of heteronormativity as the defining framework for contemporary Caribbean discourse. The expansive politics of this writing also shifts the thematic focus away from dominant depictions of Anglophone homophobia and Hispanophone ‘machismo’ to the multiple significances of women’s erotic agencies within the quotidian; the irruptions of transgender and gender nonconforming subjectivities; the performance poetics of transvestism and cross-dressing; and the passionate corporeal reversals of Antillean carnival and masquerade.

This chapter explores discriminatory language with regard to sexual orientation and sexuality. Starting with the story of playwright Oscar Wilde and his imprisonment, we look at the history of criminalizing same-sex attraction. Ways of talking about same-sex sexuality over time are discussed, both in-group and out-group, and the use of coded language, such as Polari. Slurs are treated, as well as the reclamation of some of these terms, especially queer and gay. We look at historical and contemporary cases of homophobia in language from popular culture and the media.