TW: In the early 1980s, we moved carefully: the university’s sex representation course was a seminar for majors, and tightly controlled, extremely sensitive to ethical and other issues.Īs the sex/porn wars slowed down, and my discipline began to catch up with publications on porn in the journal Jump Cut and from academic presses in the late 1980s - such as Linda Williams’ book Hard Core - my discipline, along with Women’s Studies and Cultural Studies, took greater interest in catching up with the rapidly transforming cultural environment. What are a few major changes you've noticed in the course of your career? At the same time, India and Nepal offer three gender options on their state-issued identity papers!Īt Concordia, you've been researching and teaching about sexual representation in cinema for more than 30 years. I was at the Mumbai International Queer Film Festival last year, where sex- and gender-diverse communities were very apprehensive about the renewed criminalization of same-sex relationships in India: an obvious reminder of the cultural relativity of sexual and gender identities and rituals such as coming out. “Coming out” cannot be considered in isolation from this very rocky political landscape. Raise the age of consent! Recriminalize sex work! Criminalize non-disclosure of HIV/AIDS serostatus in safe consensual relations! Punish injection drug users by encouraging HIV transmission! Deny the significance of the phenomenon of missing and murdered aboriginal women! Now, the young are often being much more inventive and flexible than I and my cohort might have been in the Gay Lib days of the 1970s.įor all its words, the current regime in Ottawa hates sexual diversity, sexual and gender freedom - not to mention young people - more than any other western government. Look at the stats about street kids and teen suicides…Īt the same time, the meaning and parameters of coming out for LGBTQI2 people have been in constant flux. One of my students was shunned by his family and religious community upon coming out - this in the second decade of the 21st century in Canada, and he is far from alone. THOMAS WAUGH: I hope so, but how fast are we moving? You came out as gay in 1977. It seems, these days, that young people are increasingly coming out early on in their careers - Michael Sam and Frank Ocean, to name two celebrity examples - or are being open about their sexuality from the get-go.Īre we moving towards a world where coming out ultimately won't be necessary?
Politics and the academics of porn: a chat with Thomas Waugh We asked Waugh: how have things changed today?
He movingly described the process in the Montreal Gazette this week. Thomas Waugh, Concordia Research Chair in Documentary Film and in Sexual Representation, came out two years prior to its inauguration in 1979. On Sunday, August 16, Montreal's Pride Parade celebrates its 36th anniversary.