There is an enormous variation in sex and sexuality among animals. How has this diversity been explained by evolutionary theory? Evolutionary theory regarding sex differences has focused on males and their characteristics and despite theoretical development away from stereotypic notions of females and males, some gender bias remains, both in theory and empirical studies. Heteronormativity is abundant in evolutionary biology. Even though same-sex sexual behaviour has been described in more than one thousand species, the focus on reproduction, which is the basis for evolutionary theory, has long hindered the insight of how widespread it is. Biological arguments for what is natural are abounding in society, and this review of variation in biological sex challenges stereotypic notions of what femaleness and maleness mean. Finally, I discuss how we can aim for a non-normative evolutionary biology.

Recension av Jens Rydström, Odd couples: a history of gay marriage in Scandinavia. (2011).

Recension av Malmquist, A. Pride and Prejudice: Lesbian Families in Contemporary Sweden (diss.). Linköpings universitet: Institutionen för beteendevetenskap och lärande 2015 (106 sidor)

Norms concerning family formation are generally based on ideals of coupled love and the two-parent-family, however, family practices frequently go beyond these norms. Families consisting of more than two parents that are co-parenting have only been studied to a small extent. Analysing Swedish newspaper and magazine articles on more-than-two-parent families between 1992 and 2016 we ask: How are more-than-two-parent families displayed in Swedish media stories? Are they portrayed as legitimate families, and if so, how is this legitimacy discursively constructed? What role does recognition play in the media stories and how is it negotiated in the narratives? We use the concepts display (Finch 2007) and recognition/redistribution (Fraser 1998; 2003) in exploring the significance that recognition and legitimacy have for the depiction of families with more than two parents in the media material. The display of more-than-two-parent families in the Swedish media stories analysed is generally characterised by repertoires of modern family life, of love and intimacy and responsible and successful parenting. These repertoires are used to display the families as normal, modern, and legitimate. In addition to the repertoires mentioned, there are repertoires of importance of geographical location, of strategies and of critique of current legislation that further emphasise the legitimacy of the more-than-two-parent families in contrast to an outdated legislation that forces these legitimate families to strategise their intimate relationships. Despite several of the people interviewed being described as polyamorous or gay/lesbian, there are no tendencies in the empirical material to motivate the need for rights based on an essentialised polyamorous identity; rather, the focus is on the fact that it is the practical care relations that need to be protected.

Det kan förefalla omöjligt att tillfoga något nytt om konstnärer som Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rafael och Caravaggio som det skrivits så oändligt mycket om. Men än finns det förbisedda verk och verk att återupptäcka. Ett sådant är den ganska okända takmålning från omkring 1599 av Caravaggio, i ett litet sidorum, en studerkammare, i Casino Ludovisi i Rom. Målningen återupptäcktes 2010 då 400-års- minnet av Caravaggios död uppmärksammades med utställningar och visningar av hans verk i kyrkor, museer och privat ägo. Den visas nu efter tidsbokning och mot en större avgift. ”Estremamente potente”, ex- tremt kraftfull, brukar besökare utbrista om målningen med molnig himmel och en sfär med zodiaken, omgiven av tre nakna män. Männen har identifierats som ett trippelsjälvporträtt av Caravaggio som gudarna Jupiter, Neptunus och Pluto (bild 1) i ett komplext kultur- och naturve- tenskapligt program som handlar om alkemi. Med queert läckage, ska det här tilläggas. I det följande kommer jag att redogöra för hur detta program också involverar ett dåtida normsystem kring sexualitet.

In Spring 2008 Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547) was dedicated an exhibition in Rome, where he was introduced from Venice by the banker Agostino Chigi in Villa Farnesina 1511. The painting L´uomo in armi (1511-1512) was the poster for the exhibition and most probably a self-portrait. It is similar to the unidentified portrait Testa di giovane by Peruzzi in grisaille in the Villa Farnesina. With a queer perspective it proposes Sebastiano del Piombo as a lover of Agostino Chigi parallell with the young spouse Francesca Ordeaschi portrayed as Dorotea (1511-1512). After the death of Rafael in 1520 Sebastiano del Piombo was considered the most skilful painter in Rome. His many majestic homoerotic portraits with virtù correspond to the results of Guido Ruggiero in Machiavelli in love, sex, self and society in he Italian Renaissance (2007) about sexual identities and selfrepresentation in different consensusrealities. Ruggiero is inspired by Foucault and discusses masculinity rereading private letters by the Florentine politician Niccolò Machiavelli and contemporary literature. The exhibition of Sebastiano del Piombo was esthetically impressive but did not answer questions from a modern visitor. The catalogue is imposing but fatally prim avoiding the sex, self and society in Renaissance Rome and Venice so obvious in the art of Sebastaino del Piombo.

This article presents the photographers Mathilda Ranch (1860-1938) in the town of Varberg in the south of Sweden and Agnes Andersson (1865-1958) in the parish of Alfta in north of Sweden. In their lifetime Sweden was changing into the industrial era introducing new professions beyond gender connotations. Individuals desiring independence found new lifestyles. Ranch and Andersson both lived in their own houses and never married. As photographers they lived in a modern zone where they could reject a compulsory heteronormative partnership. In Varberg, people said that Mathilda Ranch did not like men, due to her inferior social position as an unmarried woman. In Alfta, there was a silence concerning the familylife of Agnes Andersson although her "foster daughter" took over the atelier. Agnes Andersson is an appreciated photographer and parishoner, but as "Mathilda" in Varberg often intimately diminished as "Agnes" and far from fame outside Alfta. Why is Agnes Andersson held back?

The Villa Farnesina in Trastevere in Rome, built 1506-1511 for the rich banker Agostino Chigi from Siena is a Sienese Renaissance-villa in which noble and harmonious architecture and pictorial decoration fuse into a synthesis. The sober volumetric and spatial articulation of the Villa, devised by the architect, painter and theatrical designer Baldassare Peruzzi from Siena, is a perfect setting for the rich decorative programme of the interior frescoed by great masters as Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, Peruzzi himself and Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Sodoma. Villa Farnesina was built as a permanent and representative habitation for Chigi and his young spouse Francesca Ordeaschi whom he married in 1519, framed by frescoes with evident allusions to the glory of the banker, the ancient world, eroticism and love. The bedchamber that was to receive the spouses was the most intimate room in the Villa. Chigi wanted to allude to its function and commissioned the decoration from Bazzi, whose nickname derived from his habits. Beneath a magnificent coffered ceiling with erotic motifs he decorated the walls with a fresco cycle showing the wedding of Alexander the Great and his bride Roxana. The centerpiece of the narrative is the scene of the imminent consummation of the marriage, assisted by two men who are Alexander´s lover and the god of marriage. The decoration programme of Villa Farnesina reveals sexual norms, values and conventions, which can also be seen in the context of Sodoma´s work in Siena, where he married and settled down after leaving his commitment Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican to Raphael. Influenced by Raphael and Michelangelo he successfully introduced la maniera moderna from Rome, including a spectacular personal lifestyle. Sodoma´s work is characterized by a striking sensual homoerotic charisma. In the Sienese frescocycles in Abbazia Monte Oliveto Maggiore, Oratorio di San Bernardino, the church of San Domenico women as well as men are flirting with each other. He had committments in prestigious environments as Palazzo Comunale, the Cathedral, Santa Maria della Scala, palaces and churches all over the republic of Siena. The organization of sexuality in his home-town seem to have given Sodoma a more solid artistic and social reputation than among art historians of the 20th century. Art history is a prim bourgeois discipline, which except for some Renaissance-experts in the 19th century focusing on the Florentine Renaissance has marginalized this Sienese eminent notorious Renaissance-artist. A queer, ethnological and historical reading of Villa Farnesina in Rome and initial impression of the sexual context of Sodoma´s work in the republic of Siena of the 16th century indicates a considerable appreciation of his homoerotic work as well as his personal image. Above all it reveals a flagrant heteronormativity and its mechanisms in the discipline of Art History in the 20th century, marginalized by Sodoma in Villa Farnesina.  

Under det senaste decenniet har det kommit flera svenska studier av flickors villkor inom olika discipliner, och Maria Margareta Österholm skriver med sin avhandling i litteraturvetenskap in sig i detta expan- derande forskningsfält. Ett flicklaboratorium i valda bitar undersöker flickor som på olika sätt avviker från en normativ femininitet i svensk och finlandssvensk litteratur mellan 1980 och 2005, för att diskutera de- ras ”feministiska och genusproblematiserande möjligheter” (Österholm 2013, 53). Romaner och noveller av bland andra Monika Fagerholm, Mare Kandre och Inger Edelfeldt analyseras med fokus på framställ- ningen av genusnormer och normbrott, samt de rum och litterära grepp som möjliggör att skeva flickor skrivs fram.

This essay uses my own autobiographical narrative as an example of queer familyformation theory in practice to chart the process by which our child was con-ceived and born in a country where, at the time, such an occurrence was a legalimpossibility. The story of our child’s birth begins with my own gender transitionacross national lines from the U.K. to Sweden, and how I managed to use a legalloophole to register as female in Sweden as a trans woman without having toundergo sterilization, which was the law at the time. I discuss queer family andkinship formation, the issues arising from multi-queer parent family dynamics,trans-parenting and transnational legal navigation in conception, adoption poli-cies as they relate to heteronormative biases in child lineage and registration andthe impacts of legal divorce and non-monogamy in social and legal definitions ina Swedish and international context.

The aim of this article is to examine the representation of female masculinity in genre literature. Reading female masculinity as queer embodiment, I put two science fictional texts driven by a typical action narrative in dialogue with earlier research on representations of female masculinity in literature and popular culture to demonstrate the importance of bringing the genre of the text into the analysis when examining female masculinity.

In the article, I use the connection between female masculinity and tragedy as my starting point to exemplify how the genre of a text shapes the depiction and reading of female masculinity. In the action-driven science fiction texts I study, this link is very much present, but tragedy is given another role to play. Instead of being an element in the constitution of gender non-conforming as an unlivable experience, the representation of these masculine female heroes as oriented away from heteronormative constructions of a good life (Ahmed 2006) makes possiblethe depiction of these women as masculine, as well as the glorification of their gender non-conformity within the framework of the action-based SF narrative.

The aim of this article is to examine the representation of female masculinity in genre literature. Reading female masculinity as queer embodiment, I put two science fictional texts driven by a typical action narrative in dialogue with earlier research on representations of female masculinity in literature and popular culture to demonstrate the importance of bringing the genre of the text into the analysis when examining female masculinity.

In the article, I use the connection between female masculinity and tragedy as my starting point to exemplify how the genre of a text shapes the depiction and reading of female masculinity. In the action-driven science fiction texts I study, this link is very much present, but tragedy is given another role to play. Instead of being an element in the constitution of gender non-conforming as an unlivable experience, the representation of these masculine female heroes as oriented away from heteronormative constructions of a good life (Ahmed 2006) makes possiblethe depiction of these women as masculine, as well as the glorification of their gender non-conformity within the framework of the action-based SF narrative.

A queer moment in care. Although the perspective of caring sciences propose to cover the suffering of patients as well as humanistic aspects of caring relationships its theoretical frame lacks assumptions connected gender and sexuality. From a starting point of a concrete caring situation within the context of psychiatric care this autobiographic study makes shortcomings within the theoretical frame of caring sciences obvious. The shortcomings are related to issues of instability of gender, gender performances and heteronormativity as for granted taken assumptions. The situation concerns an encounter between me as a nurse and a patient who experienced himself as both a man and a woman. By means of queer theories, aspects of what happened in the situation are interpreted. Queer theoretical concepts such as the binary heterosexual matrix, gender instability, performativity, and subversive performativity are penetrated in relation to the caring situation. It is suggested that in order to develop and complement the theoretical frame of caring sciences the perspective of queer should be used.

The self and the elusive necessity of the subject: outline of a social- psychological critique of Judith Butler In her widely cited and criticised Gender trouble, Judith Butler (1990) elaborated the thought that gender needs to be understood as performative – a certain kind of doing behind the bars of a hegemonic heterosexual imperative that governs intelligible bodily configurations. Drawing mainly on psychoanalytical and foucauldian arguments, Butler dwells upon numerous important questions concerning power and subjectivity while arguing that subjects need to conform to the heterosexual matrix in order to gain intelligibility. However, she does not manage to emphasize the importance of situating neither the subject nor the body in a social reality. Due to the problematic and sometimes unclear differentiation between the concepts of performance and performativity as well as the somewhat obscure idea of subjectivity, self and corporeality that are put forward in Butler’s theorizing, it is here argued that her theoretical framework needs to be re-conceptualized from the viewpoint of social psychology. Combining a theoretical framework that draws upon Butler (1990; 1993; 1997a and 1997b) with a symbolic interactionist perspective (Blumer 1969; Mead 1995), this paper aims at locating intersections, gaps and similarities between these rather disparate perspectives. Initiating such a venture, the argument pursued in this paper revolves around the concept of social self and the ways this concept possibly can elaborate Butler’s theory. It is argued that a social psychological take on butlerian thinking can enhance and further elaborate an understanding of the processes involved in the doing of gender.

This article argues that child protection rhetoric rarely applies to all children and that it, in fact, often contains decisions over whose lives are worthy of protection, and whose are not. In Russia, “traditional (family) values” have effectively become state policy, the 2013 federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values” being the most prominent example of this. The fixation of such “traditional values” discourses on protecting children from “early sexualization” by barring them from access to LGBTQ-inclusive education and care demonstrates that the child on whose behalf this protection is demanded is deemed to be straight, while further examples of child protection discourses also show that innocence is often viewed as the exlusive property of white, middle-class children. Responding to the recent escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine, this text discusses how the trauma, displacement and death of children in Ukraine reveals the biopolitical core of traditional values discourses. 

This article argues that child protection rhetoric rarely applies to all children and that it, in fact, often contains decisions over whose lives are worthy of protection, and whose are not. In Russia, “traditional (family) values” have effectively become state policy, the 2013 federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values” being the most prominent example of this. The fixation of such “traditional values” discourses on protecting children from “early sexualization” by barring them from access to LGBTQ-inclusive education and care demonstrates that the child on whose behalf this protection is demanded is deemed to be straight, while further examples of child protection discourses also show that innocence is often viewed as the exlusive property of white, middle-class children. Responding to the recent escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine, this text discusses how the trauma, displacement and death of children in Ukraine reveals the biopolitical core of traditional values discourses.

Experiences of being LGBTQ1 within Swedish free-church environments have not been highlighted to any great extent. In the autumn of 2020, I participated, as an observing researcher, in a study group consisting of LGBTQ persons and LGBTQ allies focusing on LGBTQ in the Christian free-church environment. The discussions took their point of departure in the question how we ensure that congregations are a welcoming and safe place for LGBTQ people. This article is based on the conversations that took place during these meetings. In the articleI will examine how power relations and tensions were described and investigate how LGBTQ persons and their allies handle and challenge them. The results of the investigation show that free-church contexts are permeated with hegemonic heteronormativity, the structural power of which operates both visibly and covertly. The participants talk about unlivable compromises, emanating from membership always being conditional and subject to certain terms for LGBTQ persons. The participants narrated their experiences, ranging from subtle com- ments or silences to ostracism and exclusion. All participants testified to the existence of various forms of conversion efforts in contemporary free church environments and recounted examples of how they had been pressured in prayer and pastoral care and conversations in which they had been silenced or told that it is possible to change one’s sexual orientation or identity.

I samtida identitetspolitiska diskussioner har femmes kommit att bli kända främst för en feminin estetik, som trots sitt tydliga stilistiska ursprung i en lesbisk/queer begärsekonomi snarare än i heterosexuell feminitet, gör dem inte bara oigenkänneliga "som det de är" utan också politiskt omstridda, inte minst av feminister som ser feminitet som en problematisk yta. På senare år har femmes i urbana västerländska queera och feministiska kontexter blivit allt mer synliga, såväl i skrud som i skrift och då inte sällan genom att betona intentionalitet, ironi och parodi. Även om dessa argument om femme-ininitet är uppfriskande och politiskt försvarbara passar de som hand i handske i en senkapitalistik radikalindividualism där alla uppmuntras att se sig som unika - precis som alla andra. Ett fokus på medvetna val ger oss heller inga svar på hur queer femininitet förkroppsligas eller hur vi ska förstå relationen mellan materialitet och teknologi. Gör kläderna verkligen en femme?

Med Pandoras nyfikenhet öppnar denna rizomatiska essä den alltid lika omstridda feminina utklädningslådan och beauty boxen - inte för att varken ännu en gång fördöma och förkasta de plågor och smärtor som femininitetsattributen och dess trivialiserade arbetsinsatser orsakar dess bärare, eller för att likt en förkunnande modeexpert, hylla en korrekt och queer femmegarderob för en växande femme-inistisk rörelse där femmens osynlighet är "så förra året" utan för att fundera över femme mode som ett förkroppsligande av feministisk och queer historia. Med hjälp av modemetaforer och mot bakgrund av queera arkiv, är detta textexperiment en installation och en situation, och ett personligt, politiskt och etnografiskt inspirerat bidrag till att skriva den femme-inina kroppen som en somateknisk figuration snarare än en enhetlig identitetspolitisk kategori och där såväl språkande som skapande ingår i figurerandet.

I en essä som söker att figurera textualitet och materialitet samtidigt tas läsaren med till en femmegarderob som handlar mindre om queer synlighet och osynlighet och mer om kosmetikans plats i kosmos, feminitetens plats i feminismen och spegelns plats i spekulerandet. Här praktiseras det feminina arbetet med såväl kroppslig/klädesmässig som textuell estetik genom till synes triviala men alltid intellektuella feminina påklädningsritualer där olika argument och plagg prövas och kommer till uttryck. Genom att låta femme figurera snarare än enbart manifestera och genom att betona hur såväl plagg som idéer lånas, byts, stjäls och (om)skapas, vill texten inte bara visa tänkbara kombinationer av plagg och hur de kan förstås eller förkastas, utan också plädera för att femininitetsteknologier inte kan skiljas från utan är en del av en femme-inin subjektivitet.