caa a22 4500 606232281 CHVBK 20210128101225.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150701xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10508-015-0544-y doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10508-015-0544-y Weeks Jeffrey Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, SE1 0AA, London, UK aut Beyond the Categories [Elektronische Daten] [Jeffrey Weeks] Shushu is a Turkish Cypriot drag performance artist and the article begins with a discussion of a short film about him by a Greek Cypriot playwright, film maker, and gay activist. The film is interesting in its own right as a documentary about a complex personality, but it is also relevant to wider discussion of sexual and gender identity and categorization in a country divided by history, religion, politics, and military occupation. Shushu rejects easy identification as gay or transgender, or anything else. He is his own self. But refusing a recognized and recognizable identity brings problems, and I detected a pervasive mood of melancholy in his portrayal. The article builds from this starting point to explore the problematic nature of identities and categorizations in the contemporary world. The analysis opens with the power of words and language in defining and classifying sexuality. The early sexologists set in motion a whole catalogue of categories which continue to shape sexual thinking, believing that they were providing a scientific basis for a more humane treatment of sexual variations. This logic continues in DSM-5. The historical effect, however, has been more complex. Categorizations have often fixed individuals into a narrow band of definitions and identities that marginalize and pathologize. The emergence of radical sexual-social movements from the late 1960s offered new forms of grassroots knowledge in opposition to the sexological tradition, but at first these movements worked to affirm rather than challenge the significance of identity categories. Increasingly, however, identities have been problematized and challenged for limiting sexual and gender possibilities, leading to the apparently paradoxical situation where sexual identities are seen as both necessary and impossible. There are emotional costs both in affirming a fixed identity and in rejecting one. Shushu is caught in this dilemma, leading to the pervasive sense of loss that shapes the film. Springer Science+Business Media New York, 2015 Diversity nationallicence Gay nationallicence Identity nationallicence Melancholy nationallicence Perversion nationallicence Sexology nationallicence Transgender nationallicence DSM-5 nationallicence Archives of Sexual Behavior Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 44/5(2015-07-01), 1091-1097 0004-0002 44:5<1091 2015 44 10508 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-015-0544-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-015-0544-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Weeks Jeffrey Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, SE1 0AA, London, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Archives of Sexual Behavior Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 44/5(2015-07-01), 1091-1097 0004-0002 44:5<1091 2015 44 10508