Sexuality Studies Overview

Principles

Definition

Sexuality studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that investigates human sexual behavior and identity. It examines how sexuality intersects with other social categories such as gender, race, and class, drawing upon diverse perspectives to understand related social factors and phenomena.

Ontological type

Theoretical Frameworks

Core Research Methods

Intersectional Dimensions

Key developments

Key Figures

Constructivist Performativity era

Judith Butler [1] emerges as a central figure in the Constructivist Performativity era, with affiliations to Johns Hopkins University [3] and the University of California, Berkeley [4]. Her key contribution, crystallized in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity [7], reframes gender as performative and constructed through repeated social practices, undermining essentialist accounts and catalyzing feminist and queer activism. Michel Foucault [2] stands as a second pillar of this era, with ties to Collège de France [5] and Aarhus University [6]. His The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction [8] traced the genealogy of sexuality to show how power-knowledge regimes produce sexual norms and subjectivities, a defining move for discursive and activist critique in the era.

Empirical Intersectionality era

Rosi Braidotti [1] is a prominent figure in the Empirical Intersectionality era, with affiliations at Utrecht University [2] and the University of Edinburgh [3]. Her 2003 Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming [4] advances a materialist, anti-essentialist reading of sexuality and gender that treats identity as produced by social and institutional matrices, a crucial move for linking empirical inquiry with intersectional analysis in this era. In this period, Braidotti [1]'s commitment to materialist becoming, as realized in Metamorphoses [4], recasts sexuality as an effect of political and economic infrastructures rather than a fixed attribute, with intellectual work anchored by Utrecht University [2] and the University of Edinburgh [3]. This synthesis, championed by Braidotti [1], influenced the era's move toward citizenship, empire, and inequality in sexuality studies.

Queer Geopolitics era

José Esteban Muñoz [1] is associated with New York University [3] and Universitat de Barcelona [4] in this period. His key contribution, Cruising utopia: the then and there of queer futurity [7], reframed queer futurity as a spatial and temporal project that interrogates mobility, embodiment, and political possibility, shaping later queer geopolitics and theory for this era. Debbie Ging [2] is affiliated with Cardiff University [5] and University of Stirling [6] in this era. Her paper Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere [8] analyzes online masculinities and the dynamics of the manosphere, clarifying how digital publics reproduce gendered power and informing understandings of sexual politics within contemporary geopolitics.