Sex Panic Rhetorics, Queer Interventions

232 Pages·2020·6.735 MB·English

by  Ian Barnard

SEX PANIC RHETORICS,QUEER INTERVENTIONS
Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique
Series Editor
John Louis Lucaites
Editorial Board
Jeffrey A. Bennett
Carole Blair
Joshua Gunn
Robert Hariman
Debra Hawhee
Claire Sisco King
Steven Mailloux
Raymie E. McKerrow
Toby Miller
Phaedra C. Pezzullo
Austin Sarat
Janet Staiger
Barbie Zelizer
SEX PANIC RHETORICS
QUEER INTERVENTIONS
IAN BARNARD
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
tuscaloosa
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487- 0380
uapress.ua.edu
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Alabama
Press
All rights reserved.
Inquiries about reproducing material from this work
should be addressed to the University of Alabama
Press.
Typeface: Scala Pro, TW Cen MT
Cover image: Painting by Aneil Rallin
Cover design: David Nees
Cataloging- in- Publication data is available from the
Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978- 0- 8173- 2056- 0
E- ISBN: 978- 0- 8173- 9291- 8
For my Millennial and Generation Z students at Chapman University
—the best generations
Joe: Everything I say to you is made to mean something else . . . Oh,
let’s get out of here as fast as we can.
Karen: [as though she is finishing the sentence for him]: And every word
will have a new meaning. You think we’ll be able to run away from
that? Woman, child, love, lawyer—no words that we can use in
safety any more. [Laughs bitterly.]
From Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play The Children’s Hour
Joe: Everything I say is made to mean something else
Karen: Yes, every word has a new meaning . . . child . . . love . . .
friend . . . woman . . . there aren’t many safe words any more . . .
even marriage doesn’t have the same meaning any more.
From the 1961 film The Children’s Hour
contents
Acknowledgments ix
1.
Introduction (Arriving at the Here and Now) 1
2.
Child Molester Panics 22
3.
Sex- Trafficking Panics 45
4.
Transgender Panics 65
5.
Incest Panics 88
6.
Queer Kids 110
7.
Pedagogy Panics 137
8.
Conclusion (Toward a Queer Goodbye) 172
Notes 179
References 193
Index 215

acknowledgments
I am very grateful to my editor, Dan Waterman, and the anonymous
reviewers for the University of Alabama Press for their enthusiastic re-
sponse to my manuscript and for their helpful feedback, much of which
has been incorporated into the book you have before you. I also owe a
great debt to the following friends, colleagues, students, ex- students,
editors, and University of Alabama Press staff who have (sometimes
without realizing it) referred me to sources and resources that enabled
me to get where I needed to go with this book, encouraged me when I
doubted myself, given me generous feedback on the manuscript in part
or whole and who did the work of getting the book into print: Norma
Aceves, Jonathan Alexander, Kent Baxter, Jon Berry, K. J. Cerankowski,
Tomás Crowder- Taraborrelli, Petra Dierkes- Thrun, Elise Dixon, Jenifer
Fennell, Kelli Fuery, Patrick Fuery, Brian Glaser, Phil Grant, Emmett
Griffith, Jeanne Gunner, Susan Harris, Susan Jarratt, Trevor Jones, Naz
Keynejad, Claire Sisco King, Christina Kowalski, Alicia Kozameh, Kris-
ten Laakso, Joanna Levin, Skye Maule- O’Brien, Jan Osborn, Jada Au-
gustine Patchigondla, Morgan Read- Davidson, Blanche Sarratt, Ryley
Schlachter, Daniele Struppa, Mónica Szurmuk, Joseph Thomas, Radley
Turner, George Uba, Alison Williams, Kristi Wilson, Patricia Zline, and
my brilliant graduate assistants, Sam Risak and Natalia Sanchez.
I presented material from some of these chapters at Chapman Uni-
versity in 2013, at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in 2013 and
2017, at the Western States Rhetoric and Literacy conference in 2016, and
at the Rhetoric Society of America 2018 conference—I appreciate the
productive questions and comments offered by my interlocutors at these
presentations.
Thanks also to Chapman University for a sabbatical leave that en-
abled me to complete work on this book and to the interlibrary loan staff
at Chapman University’s Leatherby Libraries for their conscientious as-
sistance in locating sources for this research. I am grateful, too, for the
outstanding collection at the beautiful downtown branch of the Los An-
geles Public Library and for the assistance of the knowledgeable and pro-
fessional LAPL librarians in helping me to locate sources.