Guest Editors: Celeste E. Orr (celeste.orr@unb.ca) and Casey Burkholder (casey.burkholder@concordia.ca).
Outline of Theme
To date, there remains no comprehensive intersex studies analysis about joy and happiness. What might intersex studies scholars and activists bring to a feminist conversation about joy? How might anti-interphobic perspectives prompt feminist scholars to rethink happiness? This special issue seeks to answer these questions, and to bring intersex studies in conversation with feminist theorizations of happiness and joy.
Feminist investigations into happiness and joy are bountiful (see: Robinson 2016; Pinto 2022; Lauri & Lauri 2023). The foundational text, The Promise of Happiness, gives happiness a history and offers feminist killjoy analyses of the ways happiness is promised when we live ‘the right way’ (Ahmed 2010: 9). There are feminist critiques of patriarchal claims that monogamous straight marriage and motherhood will bring women happiness (Ouellette 2019). Feminists challenge the call to ‘find love and happiness at work’ under neoliberal capitalism (Weeks 2017: 37). Feminists debunk claims that ‘You can only be happy if you’re thin’ (Bahra 2021: 79). While there are many feminist texts about happiness and joy, intersex remains absent from these theorizations.
Intersex studies and activism understandably focus on trauma and violence to fight against myriad forms of interphobia (see: Holmes 2009; Morland 2011; Davis 2015; Rubin 2017; Orr 2022; Monro, Wall, & Wood 2024). Yet, joy is not unimportant or absent from intersex studies, activism, or intersex people’s lives. Indeed, the goal of anti-interphobic projects is to create a world where intersex folks freely exercise their autonomy and do things that bring them happiness and joy. That said, intersex happiness and joy can often remain implicit or undertheorized. This special issue aims to consider intersex happiness and joy and think how feminist thinking can help theorize said happiness and joy.
Justification
While violence saturates intersex studies and feminist studies, there is a desire to give space to joy and happiness. There is a smattering of recent publications that address intersex joy (Dale 2022; Jones 2022; Yusin 2022; Wall & Laureano 2023). Also, some intersex activists discuss the ways in which being intersex brings them happiness to counter dominant assumptions that being intersex must always be doom and gloom (Viloria 2017; Zieselman 2020). Intersex joy, according to Mari (in hi, hello, hans 2021), means “focusing on thriving.” For Sean Saifa Wall (2023), intersex joy is a challenge to “the trauma narrative” because “I want to show the joy.” Pidgeon Pagonis (2023) remarks, “there’s so much joy and release that comes with just being yourself.” Although difficult, it is possible to ‘balance loss and pride’, pain and joy, trauma and happiness (Clare 2017: 131). Moreover, intersex and anti- interphobic perspectives could open a well-spring of ideas in feminist thinking about joy.
The turn toward joy in anti-interphobic work mirrors the turn toward joy in queer, trans, crip, Indigenous, and Black studies as a mode of refusing the ‘joy deficit’ in sociological research (Shuster & Westbrook 2022: 1; see also: Ashcroft 2022; Jacobsen & Devor, 2022; Lewis-Giggetts 2022; Burkholder & Keehn, 2023; Duran & Coloma 2023; Reid 2023; Wright and Greenberg 2023). For example, Michael Tristano Jr. (2022: 279) expresses a celebration of queer joy among people of color, aiming to explore ‘the limits of human curiosity; renegotiate what relationships can look, feel, sound, and smell like; and use desire to propel us through the social world where we refuse colonial futures and expand decolonial options’. The concept of queer joys, pleasures, and embodiments (Britzman, 2012) offers an alternative narrative, countering Snediker’s (2006) assertion that queer theory tends to equate queerness with sadness, fragmentation, and self-destruction (also see: Thorpe, 2024). Queer joy contends that traditional norms surrounding gender and sexuality do not hold exclusive dominion over joy (Wright and Greenberg, 2023). And so too do we conceptualize intersex joy.
Thinking of intersex joy also mirrors some trans studies scholars’ turn away from concentrating on gender dysphoria and turning towards centring joy or gender euphoria (Shuster & Westbrook 2022; Holloway 2023). ‘Increasingly,’ Kai Jacobsen and Aaron Devor (2022, 119) remark, ‘trans communities and scholars are pushing against this focus on dysphoria to make space for discussions of more positive aspects of trans experiences’.
What might a sustained focus on happiness, joy, pleasure, or even euphoria bring to intersex studies, intersex activism, and feminists concerned with these emotions and experiences? To address this question, we seek articles that explore intersex joy and happiness from theoretical and methodological approaches that seek to counter interphobia, racism, ableism, sanism, queerphobia, patriarchy, classism, and sexism to work toward social change. Authors in the special issue may also consider other forms of joy that intersect with intersex joy such as Black, Native, queer, and/or crip joy.
Possible topics might include but are not limited to:
- Intersex experiences of gender euphoria
- Intersex joy, pleasure, or happiness
- Cultivating intersex communities
- Intersex feminist killjoys
- Intersex embodiment
- Intersex methodologies
- Disrupting the ‘joy deficit’ in intersex studies (Shuster and Westbrook, 2022: 1). We encourage diverse understandings and theorizing about the notion of intersex joy. We extend an invitation for both theoretical and empirical papers from those who explore intersex joy in their academic or activist inquiries and methodologies. This special issue aims to gather contributions from established and emerging scholar-activists spanning various fields of study. The special issue will be published in English. Submission Guidelines
Deadline for abstract proposals: August 15, 2024 Proposal submissions should include: 250-300 word abstract (excluding references) with title, author’s name(s), a 100-word bio with affiliation, and contact information. Invitations to submit a full paper will be sent to selected authors by September 15, 2024. Deadline for full draft submissions: January 1, 2025.
Expected date of publication January 2026. Full papers should be 6,000-7,000 words, including endnotes and references. Final acceptance is conditional upon peer-review assessments.
Please send proposals to both Celeste E. Orr (celeste.orr@unb.ca) and Casey Burkholder (casey.burkholder@concordia.ca).
For more information on Feminist Theory, including the journal’s style guide, can be found at https://journals.sagepub.com/home/fty.
Feminist Theory 