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Nicola Evans
BA (First Class) Oxford Unviersity 1985 English Language and Literature
PhD, The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, 1993
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, 1994-5
Assistant Prof, Dept of Comm and Culture, Indiana University Bloomington, USA (1995-2002)
Senior Lecturer, Media/Comm, University of Wollongong, Australia 2002-
Supervisors: Professor Tanja Modleski and Professor James Beniger
PhD, The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, 1993
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, 1994-5
Assistant Prof, Dept of Comm and Culture, Indiana University Bloomington, USA (1995-2002)
Senior Lecturer, Media/Comm, University of Wollongong, Australia 2002-
Supervisors: Professor Tanja Modleski and Professor James Beniger
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The name 'fag hag' is given to straight women who form their strongest attachments with gay men. Although the exact nature of these attachments is elusive, reports of how the term is used indicate that it includes women who seek romantic and sexual affiliations with gay men. Fag hag is hardly a dignified name, evoking as it does the plaintive characters of a French farce trapped in an absurd round of misdirected affections. Fag hags seem to take female supplementarity to its grotesque limits by appending themselves to men who by definition, that is by some definitions of gay identity, can have no use for them. Yet the fact that we cannot make sense of the fag hag's proclivities in terms of existing categories of sexual identity suggests that the fag hag deserves more serious attention. If, for example, fag hags are straight in the sense that they desire members of the opposite sex, to what extent does heterosexuality depend upon the consummation as well as the experience of desirer? What does it mean for the heterosexual desires of women to be trained on gay men rather than straight men - what is it about a gay sexual orientation that could around a heterosexual response? To what extent is sexual identity defined, changed or expanded not merely by the gender of the people we desire, but by the gender and sexuality of the people we attract?
The first part of this essay tracks the emergency in contemporary gay fiction of a fag hag narrative in which a woman, usually a fat woman, is positioned between two gay men whose relationship she mediates and defers. ...The second section of this essay considers the intriguing emergence of the fag hag in a theoretical exchange between Eve Kososfsky Sedgwick and David Van Leer that addresses Sedgwick's pioneering work in gay studies.
The name 'fag hag' is given to straight women who form their strongest attachments with gay men. Although the exact nature of these attachments is elusive, reports of how the term is used indicate that it includes women who seek romantic and sexual affiliations with gay men. Fag hag is hardly a dignified name, evoking as it does the plaintive characters of a French farce trapped in an absurd round of misdirected affections. Fag hags seem to take female supplementarity to its grotesque limits by appending themselves to men who by definition, that is by some definitions of gay identity, can have no use for them. Yet the fact that we cannot make sense of the fag hag's proclivities in terms of existing categories of sexual identity suggests that the fag hag deserves more serious attention. If, for example, fag hags are straight in the sense that they desire members of the opposite sex, to what extent does heterosexuality depend upon the consummation as well as the experience of desirer? What does it mean for the heterosexual desires of women to be trained on gay men rather than straight men - what is it about a gay sexual orientation that could around a heterosexual response? To what extent is sexual identity defined, changed or expanded not merely by the gender of the people we desire, but by the gender and sexuality of the people we attract?
The first part of this essay tracks the emergency in contemporary gay fiction of a fag hag narrative in which a woman, usually a fat woman, is positioned between two gay men whose relationship she mediates and defers. ...The second section of this essay considers the intriguing emergence of the fag hag in a theoretical exchange between Eve Kososfsky Sedgwick and David Van Leer that addresses Sedgwick's pioneering work in gay studies.