POLITICS AND SEXUALITY (SPRING 2020)
TAKE-HOME EXAM
Please respond to one prompt from each of the three sections below. Each response should be at least 2 pages (double spaced, 12 point font). Formal citations are unnecessary, but you should engage with and refer to specific readings in your answers. Please submit your papers via blackboard by Friday at midnight.
SECTION 1: Theories of Sexuality
1) Do you think people have the power to shape the development of their own sexuality? If so, how and to what extent?
2) Using the assigned excerpt from Irving Goffman’s Presentation of the Self discuss how the experience of gender and/or sexual identity is different from and similar to performing on a stage. You may refer to other assigned readings as well.
SECTION 2: LGBTQ Movements in the 20th Century
1) Carl Wittman’s “A Gay Manifesto,” is split into seven topic sections (“On Orientation,” “On Women,” “On Roles,” “On Oppression,” “On Sex,” “On Our Ghetto,” and “On Coalition.”) Please pick one section and evaluate its conclusions and arguments.
2) Please discuss the historical factors that may have contributed to the differences between the character of the first wave of LGBTQ organizations in the early 50s, and the second wave of organizations after Stonewall.
SECTION 3: LGBTQ Politics and Constitutional Law
1) Discuss the relevance of the notion of “privacy” to those legal developments that were most consequential to LGBTQ rights litigation.
2) Conservative critics of the past Supreme Court decisions that have expanded LGBTQ rights have argued that those decisions should be considered wrong on the grounds that they are undemocratic. How would you respond to this argument?
3) Discuss the relevance of the notion of “equal protection” to those legal developments that were most consequential to LGBTQ rights litigation.