This research will look at gender and sexual fluidity, analysing its portal in the Irish media. Due to the growing social change over the last two decades, and looking at how sexuality is frequently discussed in the media, it can be seen that people in Ireland now have the ability to talk more about sexuality and sexual identity.
As this research is looking at both ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ and the idea of ‘fluidity’ it is necessary to define all of these terms. Sex refers to the biological construct associated with male and female bodies. Although recently it has been argued that there is evidence of differences in the male and female brain (Hoag 2008). While gender is a social construct and refers to the expectations imposed on someone
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So how has sexual and gender fluidity been represented in the Irish media? To understand this a discourse analysis of all the media content is needed, this is an examination of the way in which the media report about sexual and/or gender fluidity, Fairclough states that media discourse analysis is “an attempt to show systematic links between texts, discourse practises, and sociocultural practises” (Fairclough, 1998, p.16-17). I will look at queer theory, gender and sexuality studies in my research, using theorists such as Ging and Judith Butler. Butler’s book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity questions the representation of gender in performance. Butler asks; ‘If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?’ Butler questions the double standards of sexuality and the repression of non-heterosexual identities which is relevant to my research as I want to discover the representation sexual and gender fluidity as shown in the