Ryan Thoreson
Biographic Data
| ID | 643950 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ryan Thoreson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ryan |
| FAMILY NAME | Thoreson |
| SIGNATURE | THORESON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0009-0004-8051-7655 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Sage Handbook of Global Sexualities
The domain of sexualities has occupied the imaginary of the forbidden and the unspoken since early times. Taboo became an umbrella category to describe things best left unspoken, hidden behind closed doors or buried in the most intimate secret thoughts and desires. For decades and still today, medical doctors and spiritual leaders remain the guardians of that which we dare not speak. This book is about sexualities and it emerges at a time when th…
Learning Sexuality and Gender: Issues in Childhood Education Transnationally
In recent years, advocates around the globe have drawn attention to worrying rates of discrimination and violence against LGBTQ youth, including youth in schools. LGBTQ students are at heightened risk of bullying and harassment, exclusion from school curricula, discriminatory treatment, and even expulsion from the school environment. While schools can function as sites of mistreatment of LGBTQ youth, they can also advance rights and well-being by…
Pride in Resistance
On Queer Amnesia
Sexual exceptionalism in a globalized world
One of the most predictable responses to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights around the world is that these are quintessentially Western imports, with little resonance in other co
Global homophobia: States, movements, and the politics of oppression
In Global homophobia: states, movements, and the politics of oppression, Meredith L. Weiss and Michael J. Bosia draw attention to the mechanics of political homophobia, or the ways in which prejudi
Troubling the waters of a ‘wave of homophobia’: Political economies of anti-queer animus in sub-Saharan Africa
During the debate over Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009 and 2010, journalists and activists warned of a ‘wave of homophobia’ in sub-Saharan Africa. In this article, I illustrate how this trope elides critical differences between contemporaneous incidents. I suggest that forms of anti-queer animus instead might be understood as the products of political economies, and use that approach to distinguish the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, …
Out in Africa: LGBT organizing in Namibia and South Africa
In recent years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights have prompted vigorous political contestation in polities across sub-Saharan Africa. In these campaigns, domestic politicians, African activists, transnational advocacy networks, and intergovernmental bodies have all forcefully voiced their positions. The clash of these actors has caused many of these debates to be framed as epistemic struggles – opponents of LGBT rights invok…
Beyond equality: The post-apartheid counternarrative of trans and intersex movements in South Africa
In the decade after apartheid, South Africa became well-known for the unprecedented rights and recognition it afforded to lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. This article explores the legal and social battles fought by South Africa's trans and intersex activists in the aftermath of the democratic transition, and the ways in which they are meaningfully distinct from the conventional narrative of the post-apartheid LGB movement. In particular, I hi…
Power, panics, and pronouns: The information politics of transnational LGBT NGOs
Linguistic and anthropological analyses of the globalization of sexual frameworks typically emphasize how putatively global models remain disjunctive with localized understandings. Few scholars have examined how NGOs in the Global North compile the information needed to advocate for LGBT rights, much of which is generated by activists in the Global South. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork at a Northern-based LGBT human rights NGO to explore how …
Realizing Rights in Manila
In recent years, a great deal of scholarly work has focused on global queering and the roles that nongovernmental organizations and activists play in diffusing models of sex and sexuality. With its focus on large-scale phenomena, however, this scholarship has tended to gloss over how those engaged in advocacy actually take up such models. In this essay, I consider the roles that brokers play in shaping LGBT politics in the Philippines: how they e…
Capably Queer: Exploring the Intersections of Queerness and Poverty in the Urban Philippines
Despite growing attention to identity and intersectionality in the field of development, there is still a dearth of empirical scholarship exploring the ways that being sexually non-normative—or queer —shapes the experience of living in poverty in the Global South. In this paper, I use the ‘missing dimensions of poverty’ framework developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative to explore the ways that queerness and poverty inflec…
Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide
Transnational LGBT Activism is, to my knowledge, the first book-length ethnography to explore what transnational LGBT human rights advocates actually do on a day-to-day basis. Drawing on thirteen months of field research at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the book explores how the first transnational LGBT human rights NGO formed and evolved, who is engaged in this work, how they conceptualize LGBT human rights,…
Queering Human Rights: The Yogyakarta Principles and the Norm That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Over the past twenty years, regional and international efforts to secure formal protections for sexual minorities in the human rights framework have met with limited success. The prospects of these campaigns changed significantly in November 2006, when a group of activists, intellectuals, and policymakers met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to draft a document that would outline the rights that sexual minorities enjoy as human persons under the protecti…
Somewhere over the Rainbow Nation: Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Activism in South Africa
This study addresses the apparent paradox that South Africa's gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) movement, although opposed by the vast majority of the population, has progressed much faster since democratisation in 1994 than other GLB movements worldwide. Why have the movement's legal victories – especially on same-sex marriage, which is little-discussed in the scholarly literature – not been overturned by a hostile public? My answer considers the …
Realizing Rights in Manila
In recent years, a great deal of scholarly work has focused on global queering and the roles that nongovernmental organizations and activists play in diffusing models of sex and sexuality. With its focus on large-scale phenomena, however, this scholarship has tended to gloss over how those engaged in advocacy actually take up such models. In this essay, I consider the roles that brokers play in shaping LGBT politics in the Philippines: how they e…
Somewhere over the Rainbow Nation: Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Activism in South Africa
This study addresses the apparent paradox that South Africa's gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) movement, although opposed by the vast majority of the population, has progressed much faster since democratisation in 1994 than other GLB movements worldwide. Why have the movement's legal victories – especially on same-sex marriage, which is little-discussed in the scholarly literature – not been overturned by a hostile public? My answer considers the …
Capably Queer: Exploring the Intersections of Queerness and Poverty in the Urban Philippines
Despite growing attention to identity and intersectionality in the field of development, there is still a dearth of empirical scholarship exploring the ways that being sexually non-normative—or queer —shapes the experience of living in poverty in the Global South. In this paper, I use the ‘missing dimensions of poverty’ framework developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative to explore the ways that queerness and poverty inflec…
Queering Human Rights: The Yogyakarta Principles and the Norm That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Over the past twenty years, regional and international efforts to secure formal protections for sexual minorities in the human rights framework have met with limited success. The prospects of these campaigns changed significantly in November 2006, when a group of activists, intellectuals, and policymakers met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to draft a document that would outline the rights that sexual minorities enjoy as human persons under the protecti…
Beyond equality: The post-apartheid counternarrative of trans and intersex movements in South Africa
In the decade after apartheid, South Africa became well-known for the unprecedented rights and recognition it afforded to lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. This article explores the legal and social battles fought by South Africa's trans and intersex activists in the aftermath of the democratic transition, and the ways in which they are meaningfully distinct from the conventional narrative of the post-apartheid LGB movement. In particular, I hi…
Power, panics, and pronouns: The information politics of transnational LGBT NGOs
Linguistic and anthropological analyses of the globalization of sexual frameworks typically emphasize how putatively global models remain disjunctive with localized understandings. Few scholars have examined how NGOs in the Global North compile the information needed to advocate for LGBT rights, much of which is generated by activists in the Global South. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork at a Northern-based LGBT human rights NGO to explore how …
Somewhere over the Rainbow Nation: Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Activism in South Africa
This study addresses the apparent paradox that South Africa's gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) movement, although opposed by the vast majority of the population, has progressed much faster since democratisation in 1994 than other GLB movements worldwide. Why have the movement's legal victories – especially on same-sex marriage, which is little-discussed in the scholarly literature – not been overturned by a hostile public? My answer considers the …
Queering Human Rights: The Yogyakarta Principles and the Norm That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Over the past twenty years, regional and international efforts to secure formal protections for sexual minorities in the human rights framework have met with limited success. The prospects of these campaigns changed significantly in November 2006, when a group of activists, intellectuals, and policymakers met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to draft a document that would outline the rights that sexual minorities enjoy as human persons under the protecti…
Transnational LGBT Activism: Working for Sexual Rights Worldwide
Transnational LGBT Activism is, to my knowledge, the first book-length ethnography to explore what transnational LGBT human rights advocates actually do on a day-to-day basis. Drawing on thirteen months of field research at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the book explores how the first transnational LGBT human rights NGO formed and evolved, who is engaged in this work, how they conceptualize LGBT human rights,…
Capably Queer: Exploring the Intersections of Queerness and Poverty in the Urban Philippines
Despite growing attention to identity and intersectionality in the field of development, there is still a dearth of empirical scholarship exploring the ways that being sexually non-normative—or queer —shapes the experience of living in poverty in the Global South. In this paper, I use the ‘missing dimensions of poverty’ framework developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative to explore the ways that queerness and poverty inflec…
Realizing Rights in Manila
In recent years, a great deal of scholarly work has focused on global queering and the roles that nongovernmental organizations and activists play in diffusing models of sex and sexuality. With its focus on large-scale phenomena, however, this scholarship has tended to gloss over how those engaged in advocacy actually take up such models. In this essay, I consider the roles that brokers play in shaping LGBT politics in the Philippines: how they e…
Out in Africa: LGBT organizing in Namibia and South Africa
In recent years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights have prompted vigorous political contestation in polities across sub-Saharan Africa. In these campaigns, domestic politicians, African activists, transnational advocacy networks, and intergovernmental bodies have all forcefully voiced their positions. The clash of these actors has caused many of these debates to be framed as epistemic struggles – opponents of LGBT rights invok…
Beyond equality: The post-apartheid counternarrative of trans and intersex movements in South Africa
In the decade after apartheid, South Africa became well-known for the unprecedented rights and recognition it afforded to lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. This article explores the legal and social battles fought by South Africa's trans and intersex activists in the aftermath of the democratic transition, and the ways in which they are meaningfully distinct from the conventional narrative of the post-apartheid LGB movement. In particular, I hi…
Power, panics, and pronouns: The information politics of transnational LGBT NGOs
Linguistic and anthropological analyses of the globalization of sexual frameworks typically emphasize how putatively global models remain disjunctive with localized understandings. Few scholars have examined how NGOs in the Global North compile the information needed to advocate for LGBT rights, much of which is generated by activists in the Global South. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork at a Northern-based LGBT human rights NGO to explore how …
Troubling the waters of a ‘wave of homophobia’: Political economies of anti-queer animus in sub-Saharan Africa
During the debate over Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009 and 2010, journalists and activists warned of a ‘wave of homophobia’ in sub-Saharan Africa. In this article, I illustrate how this trope elides critical differences between contemporaneous incidents. I suggest that forms of anti-queer animus instead might be understood as the products of political economies, and use that approach to distinguish the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, …
Global homophobia: States, movements, and the politics of oppression
In Global homophobia: states, movements, and the politics of oppression, Meredith L. Weiss and Michael J. Bosia draw attention to the mechanics of political homophobia, or the ways in which prejudi
Sexual exceptionalism in a globalized world
One of the most predictable responses to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights around the world is that these are quintessentially Western imports, with little resonance in other co
Pride in Resistance
On Queer Amnesia
Learning Sexuality and Gender: Issues in Childhood Education Transnationally
In recent years, advocates around the globe have drawn attention to worrying rates of discrimination and violence against LGBTQ youth, including youth in schools. LGBTQ students are at heightened risk of bullying and harassment, exclusion from school curricula, discriminatory treatment, and even expulsion from the school environment. While schools can function as sites of mistreatment of LGBTQ youth, they can also advance rights and well-being by…
The Sage Handbook of Global Sexualities
The domain of sexualities has occupied the imaginary of the forbidden and the unspoken since early times. Taboo became an umbrella category to describe things best left unspoken, hidden behind closed doors or buried in the most intimate secret thoughts and desires. For decades and still today, medical doctors and spiritual leaders remain the guardians of that which we dare not speak. This book is about sexualities and it emerges at a time when th…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Human sexuality (5 works) · Law (5 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (5 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (4 works)