Love Me Gender: Normative Homosexuality and "Ex-gay" Performativity in Reparative Therapy Narratives

Jeffrey A. Bennett, University of Iowa

Abstract

Advocates of "reparative therapy" employ a modified version of Judith Butler's "normative heterosexuality" discourse to "cure" gays and lesbians. Coupling Butler with a "coming out of homosexuality" personal narrative, reorientation texts such as Love Won Out construct a ubiquitous foundation for sexual identity and collective experience. At the text's conclusion, a tension is produced between a constitutive conception of identity and a more traditional notion of self, grounded in a secured ontological base. These conflicting constructs are ultimately productive for performance scholars, illustrating an attempt to refigure the location of sexual identity and forge new positions of performativity