Homoeroticism
Shakespeare and Homoeroticism: A Study of Cross-dressing, Society, and Film
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. English Dept.
Abstract
William Shakespeare’s plays cover an array of topics focused on sexuality, from gender reversal to adultery to beastiality. But perhaps the most consistent and emphasized topic is focus on homoeroticism proceeds from the prohibition of women on the English stage and the subsequent female roles young boys would play. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Evening each present alternative representations of homoeroticism yet complement each other. A Midsummer Night’s Dream focuses on the erotic potential of unrestrained desire and the tense relationship between female amity and dominating patriarchal and heterosexual interests. As You Like It also involves female amity disrupted by heterosexual love, but Rosalind’s cross-dressing and a homoerotic man-boy relationship also complicate conventional heterosexual desires. Twelfth Night centers on cross-dressing as well, but includes subplots of male
Heterotopias of (un)desirable bodies: homoeroticism, old age and other dissidences
Abstract
This paper problematizes some possible stylizations of bodies that are socially perceived as "old" and that are engaged in (homo)erotic activities. We offer some "scenes" that were mapped during participant observations conducted in a region of sociability attended mainly by older gay men. Ways in which the materiality of the bodies in these encounters may acquire other "contours" and new "porosities" are discussed. This rematerialization enables some individuals to resist some models that normalize subjectivities and and bodies. At least at the moment of the parties in this territory (in that queer time and space), the old gay guy is no longer a "bicha velha démodé", but rather a subject of desire and a desiring subject. Our cartography tends to denounce the fragility and the fictional aspects of homo/hetero/age-normativities.
Key-words:
old age; body; gender; (homo)sexuality; (homo)eroticism
Homoeroticism and Homosociality
"Homoeroticism" and "homosociality" designate sometimes opposed but ultimately interdependent concepts. Whereas the notion of the homoerotic refers to same-sex desire, some treatments of homosocial institutions and practices accentuate segregation by sex that lacks or disavows any sexual component. Yet the terms, like the ideas and activities they look for to represent, are often revealingly elusive. If a gay lock, men's bathroom, and college fraternity house are all homosocial male spaces, is it clear that only the first allows for homeroticism? Might spaces and events constructed in part to isolate women from heterosexual interaction, such as girl's schools, slumber parties, and convents, nevertheless encourage homoerotic fantasies, and even sexual relations, between women? Although early-twentieth-century African American lodges or the Chinatown "bachelor societies" created by restrictive immigration policies were most explicitly defined by racial segregation, such same-sex societies may have also served to complicate or clarify the sexual identities
homoeroticismnoun
There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun homoeroticism. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.
About occurrences per million words in modern written English
/ˌhəʊməʊᵻˈrɒtᵻsɪz(ə)m/
hoh-moh-uh-ROT-uh-siz-uhm
/ˌhɒməʊᵻˈrɒtᵻsɪz(ə)m/
hom-oh-uh-ROT-uh-siz-uhm
/ˌhoʊmoʊəˈrɑdəˌsɪzəm/
hoh-moh-uh-RAH-duh-siz-uhm
The earliest known use of the noun homoeroticism is in the s.
OED's earliest evidence for homoeroticism is from , in Psychoanalytic Review.
Nearby entries
- homoeotransplantability, n–
- homoeotransplantation, n–
- homoeotransplanted, adj–
- homoeotype, n–
- homoeotypic, adj–
- homoeotypical, adj–
- homoeozoic, adj–
- Homo erectus, n–
- homoerotic, adj. & n–
- homoerotically, adv–
- homoeroticism, n–
- homoerotism, n–
- Homo faber, n–
- homogametic, adj–
- homogamety, n–
- homogamic, adj–
- homogamous, adj