Barker and Scheele invite you to question the status quo and to start seeing things more queerly.
Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTI action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.
Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal' - Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler's view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media.
Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.
About the Author
Dr Meg-John Barker is a writer, therapist, and activist-academic specialising in sex, gender and relationships. Meg-John is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and a UKCP accredited psychotherapist, and has over a decade of experience researching and publishing on these topics including the popular book Rewriting the Rules. @megjohnbarker Julia Scheele is an illustrator, graphic facilitator and comic book artist. She runs One Beat Zines, a feminist zine collective and distributor.
Industry Reviews
"[Queer] succeeds in opening its rarified subject matter to nonacademic audiences and disrupting assumptions and preconceptions about gender and sexuality, not to mention race, class, and the idea of 'normal.'. . . .Former undergrads will wish they had such resources when they were hacking through this difficult material." Library Journal"