Abstract

From the mainstream success of the US cable network Showtime’s lesbian television series The L Word, to the global embrace of the It Gets Better project aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, the media are central to the main-streaming and re-visioning of sexual identity. Niche television programming and interactive social media have also opened up new arenas to showcase heterogeneous sexual practices. Of particular significance in this chapter is the representation of racialized queer identities. In the two decades since the emergence of queer race studies, scholarship on queer identities has developed in tandem with sexuality, postcolonial, and diasporic studies. I will explore the limitations, exclusions, and possibilities of queer identities through the connections between these theoretical fields, considering the mutually constitutive categories of sexuality and race as a set of practices; as desire; and as identity and post-identity politics.