Straight with a Twist

Book excerpt: This engaging collection poses the question, Can straight people think queer? Straight with a Twist offers a refreshing look at the relation between queer theory and critical examinations of the construction of heterosexuality. Seeking to proliferate the findings and insights of queer theory, contributors explore the issue of whether and how queer theory can speak for and include the straight. In some of the ways that men have learned from feminism to interrogate the construction of masculinity, straights are learning from queer theory to interrogate constructions of straightness, to question their place in those constructions, and to make critical interventions into the institutional reproduction of the heterosexual norm. Straight with a Twist responds to the formulations of some of the leading figures in queer theory, considers demonstrations of the queer in television programs ("Seinfeld," for example) and contemporary films, and explores to what extent and in what ways literary texts from Shakespeare to Dorothy Allison are open to queer interpretation. Committed to antihomophobic cultural analysis, Straight with a Twist aims to extend the reach of queer theory and humanize the world by making it "queerer than ever."