Setting the course with CPDA and Gay History

Question 1

Mulderrig et al.: What is CPDA?

Answer 1

A combination of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Critical Policy Studies (CPS)

Question 2

Mulderrig et al.: What are the 3 goals of CPDA?

Answer 2

1. Exposing the vested/hidden interests and power distributions behind policy initiatives, challenging their neutrality and inevitability
2. Reflecting on how language makes a policy and legitimizes it
3. Expose how language reproduces social practices and privileges certain ways of doing and thinking

Question 3

Mulderrig et al.: How do you carry out CDPA?

Answer 3

Look at the “finer” details of the text, i.e., norms, making meaning, power, and ideology. Look at what assumptions underlie the policy, what is left unproblematic, and the material effects of this

Question 4

Mulderrig et al.: 4 reasons to combine CDA and CPS

Answer 4

1. To link detailed text analysis with policy critique,
2. Explain how and why certain policy meanings dominate
3. Provide clear, critical tools to study power and discourse in real-world policy contexts
4. Both reject positivist modes of analysis (embracing social agents involved) and share explicitly emancipatory goals

Question 5

D’Emilio: Making and unmaking minorities: What is a traditional minority group model?

Answer 5

Defining a group and the history of discrimination against it, representing a united group fighting for rights. Inspired by civil rights movement

Question 6

D’Emilio: Making and unmaking minorities: What 4 problems does the traditional minority group model pose for queer people?

Answer 6

1. Discrimination is difficult to prove long-term since being “homosexual” as identity/social group is a relatively new phenomenon (post-WW2) -> a minority must exist before it can be oppressed
2. Creates opportunities for oppression and social control, such as raiding gay bars -> you are not just gay when doing gay acts, but constantly
3. Laws assume that what you are is unchangeable, but sex and sexuality is malleable (taking definitions from values and cultures) and requires dynamic laws
4. Categories of homosexual and heterosexual are a manifestation of oppression which is fundamentally problematic -> relying on these categories only strengthens them to allow a system of oppression to continue

Question 7

D’Emilio: Making and unmaking minorities: D’Emilio criticizes the gay and lesbian movement for what?

Answer 7

Moving from emphasizing gay liberation (radical, reorganization of society/institutions/power, outside of courts -> protest against being put in a box)

to emphasizing gay rights (less radical, quest for legal rights through legislation and litigation -> puts queer people in a box)

And relying on civil rights laws strengthens the categories that allow a system of oppression to continue. Our liberation must use arguments that are consistent with sex as a malleable social construct, but gay rights argue that sex is not a choice

Question 8

D’Emilio: Making and unmaking minorities: How did homosexual identity emerge?

Answer 8

Pre-1880, individuals were not seen as homosexuals, but as engaging in a sin which was something that everyone could potentially do

Post-1880, homosexual behavior became more than an act and served as a marker of identity, existing apart from any sexual activity

Since then, men and women have elaborated complex, diverse ways of living based on this identity, reinforcing the label and creating a homosexual minority