You’ll Never be More of a Man: Gay Male Masculinities in Academic Women’s Studies

Abstract

This essay analyzes the complicated gendered landscape that academic women’s studies represents for gay male students and instructors. It uses personal experience and contemporary gender theory to explore why women’s studies is perceived to be the natural province of gay males, how gay males are interpellated as ‘‘men’’ in women’s studies, and the choices gay males face between academic feminism and popular discourses of gay rights activism. It argues that Women’s studies represents both a promising and perilous discursive space for gay males, especially those attempting to embody gender constructionist, anti-essentialist, and queer subject positions.