Gender & Sexuality Studies 2026

Abstract

Across social media and print resources, there has been a steady uptrend in the castigation of non-normative sexualities, genders, their emergent desires and practices. Transgender and non-binary populations, as well as people who identify as polyamorous, bisexual, gay, lesbian, and even sexually active women, are being interpellated as “deviant” and targeted as “degenerate”. I argue that, in the historic context of rising fascism across governmental, societal, and moral registers, the term “degeneracy” is often deployed as a placeholder for politically intolerable difference, and therefore by extension works as a proxy for queer identities, queer politics, and queer sexual acts. By comparing this type of speech-act production to the targeted demonization of Jewish art and artists by the Nazis of 1930s Germany as ‘deviant’, I claim that there is a historical precedent in understanding how such illocutionary acts can work as a metric to measure the spread of such weaponized shame and stigmatization to create marginalized populations and justify their continued oppression. Finally, I suggest that by examining the policies and practices of past queer social movements such as Vanguard and Queer Nation in the United States, and currently alQws in Palestine, alongside inclusive radical Pride events such as Queer Amsterdam in the Netherlands and CSD in Berlin, we may see sociopolitical movement responses that highlight visibility of intersectional difference rather than the invisibility of heteronormative assimilation.

Biography

Dr. Stephanie Bonvissuto is an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Dept of Womens and Gender Studies at Hunter College and the Womens and Gender Studies Program at Brooklyn College. Her research concentration focuses on gender and sexual identity development in the context of social spaces, politics, and pop culture. She holds a PhD in Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Stony Brook University, with a degreed background in Sociology. She has written chapters for the volumes Mapping LGBTQ Spaces and Places A Changing World (Springer Nature 2022) and Male Femininities (NYU Press), as well as co authored articles with Dr. Anna Klonkowska in both Sociological Focus and Creativity Studies. Dr. Bonvissuto has remained engaged with the LGBTQ community since coming out in 2005, working with various LGBTQ community centers and university based student centers, and teaching courses on Queer and Trans Spaces.