Paradoxes of an assimilation politics

Media production of gay male belonging in the Canadian ‘vital public’ from the tainted blood scandal to the present

Bibliographic Data

ID15098418
AuthorsRory Crath (Smith College), Rory David Crath (0000-0002-5855-0940, Smith College, corresponding author), Cristian Rangel (University of Toronto)
Year2017
Volume19
Issue7
Pages796-810
Publication date2017-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCulture Health & Sexuality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-1058 • E-ISSN: 1464-5351
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13691058.2016.1263873
PMID28044621
OpenAlexW2563437550
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited27

Canadian media discourses on gay men's sexuality and political inclusion serve as a rich site for understanding current tensions in debates on sexual citizenship under biopolitical regimes. This paper addresses how public health reporting in one health news media source, Canada's leading newspaper The Globe and Mail, discursively produced contiguous understandings of the moral, social and biological dimensions of gay male subjectivity and sexuality within the context of HIV risk discourses. Specifically, we critically examine the newspaper's coverage of what constitutes the public good when national blood supplies are at stake. Our analysis reveals a profound dichotomy in which gay men - as sexual subjects and subjects of rights - are recalibrated following the political and economic investments of bourgeoisie communities of interest. However encompassing the securing of legal social rights might be, gay men's sexuality is resistant to a reformatting under a heteronormative regulatory regime, as the social traumas caused by HIV continue to cast a shadow on sexual behaviours that purportedly risk leakage of contamination into the body politic

Body politic · Citizenship · Human sexuality · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · History · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Sex work and related issues

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub