It is with great pleasure and pride that we welcome you to our special issue on the future landscape of sexualities. The articles, essays and reviews in this issue tackle important, controversial questions about the significance of sexuality in shaping individuals’ and groups’ lived experiences, identities, and bodies. Skillfully and provocatively contributing to the ever-growing feminist literature on the politics of sexuality, the authors published in this issue challenge us to resist any easy assumptions about the cultural, political, and personal meanings of sexuality. These pieces push feminist scholars to reflect more deeply on questions of sexuality on both practical and theoretical levels. For, as these authors’ works so powerfully demonstrate, notions of sexuality inevitably permeate all aspects of our lives. Scholars need to continually question existing conceptualizations of sexuality not only to enrich and complicate their teaching and research, but also because the cost of not doing so can be dire to the women and men whose lives continue to be circumscribed and limited by persistent sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

The articles and essays included in this issue address a diverse assortment of topics concerning cultural and historical representations of sexualities, individuals’ lived experiences as sexual minorities and gender non-normative people, and what a “post-gender, post-sexual differences” future might look like. Our contributors discuss how these issues work both within and across national and cultural borders, reflecting on the connections between community, geography, and sexuality. Rachel E. Sullivan’s “The (Mis)translation of Masculine Femininity in Rural Space: (Re)reading ‘Queer’ Women in Northern Ontario, Canada” provides a fascinating case study of the experiences of queer women in rural Canada. Many queer women in these communities, Sullivan demonstrates, often find their sexual identities “misread” and their queerness rendered invisible to their neighbors and fellow community members. These misreadings, as Sullivan’s extensive interviews with these women reveal, have complex implications for women’s romantic, sexual, and professional lives.

Kim Hackford-Peer’s essay “Queer and Trivial Tidbits: History’s Role in Projects of Self-Recognition for LGBT/Queer Youth” also tackles questions of queer individuals’ day-to-day lives and experiences in a heteronormative society. A valuable reflection how LGBT history is (and is not) encountered by and taught to queer youth, Hackford-Peer notes that young queer people often encounter LGBT history in the form of trivia about noteworthy LGBT people. This information, though useful in its ability to raise awareness about the presence of queer people in public life, nonetheless also frequently perilously oversimplifies LGBT figures’ lives, and risks shoving “ordinary” LGBT individuals’ experiences and struggles to the margins.

In addition to LGBT people’s experiences in their communities and classrooms, this issue also deals with individuals’ experiences within the medical system. Elizabeth Manning’s “F*cking with the Canadian Guidelines on Sexually Transmitted Infections: A Queer Disruption to Homonormativity” addresses how people of sexualities perceived as non-traditional (particularly transgendered and intersex individuals) frequently face marginalization and discrimination from doctors, hospitals, and insurance providers. This oppression stems, Manning demonstrates, not purely from heteronormative models, but also from homonormative models which normalize gay men and lesbian women’s needs and experiences, while erasing those of trans and intersex people.

The authors published in this issue also address questions of how representations of sexualities in literature and culture can shape conceptions and practices of sexuality. Gisela Norat’s “Subverting the Gag Order: Pregnancy in Contemporary Hispanic Women's Literature” ably considers the persistent silences surrounding representations of Hispanic women’s pregnancies in a diverse assortment of literary genres. Numerous female novelists, playwrights, and memoirists have recently dared to challenge this taboo in their literary work, and to provide uncompromising, realistic visions of what it means to be a pregnant Hispanic woman in a culture with deeply conflicted ideas about sexuality and motherhood. Lucy Nicholas’ “A Radical Queer Utopian Future: A Reciprocal Relation beyond Sexual Difference” thoughtfully considers what a future in which the categories of sexual orientation and difference might look like. Analyzing representations of such societies in feminist and queer theory, as well as in feminist science fiction, Nicholas assesses both the useful and the problematic aspects of these texts and ideologies.

As is the case with all feminist scholarship, the pieces published in this issue are not intended to lie quietly on the page. Much as these articles, essays, and reviews grapple with crucial issues of identity, politics, and activism, we hope that you will take the opportunity to actively join in the discussion about the vital questions which these pieces raise. We encourage you to visit the “Comments” section of our journal and share your thoughts with our authors, with us, and with one another. (If you’re not already a registered user of our site, signing up is easy– for more information, see our readers page (http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/information/readers or hit “Register” above.) We hope that the discussions which our authors have begun here will continue in your scholarship, your classrooms, and your conversations with your students, colleagues, partners, and friends.

	The Future Landscape of Sexualities
	Holly M. Kent
	It is with great pleasure and pride that we welcome you to our special issue on the future landscape of sexualities. The articles, essays and reviews in this issue tackle important, controversial questions about the significance of sexuality in shaping individuals’ and groups’ lived experiences, identities, and bodies. Skillfully and provocatively contributing to the ever-growing feminist literature on the politics of sexuality, the authors published in this issue challenge us to resist any easy assumptions about the cultural, political, and personal meanings of sexuality. These pieces push feminist scholars to reflect more deeply on questions of sexuality on both practical and theoretical levels. For, as these authors’ works so powerfully demonstrate, notions of sexuality inevitably permeate all aspects of our lives. Scholars need to continually question existing conceptualizations of sexuality not only to enrich and complicate their teaching and research, but also because the cost of not doing so can be dire to the women and men whose lives continue to be circumscribed and limited by persistent sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. The articles and essays included in this issue address a diverse assortment of topics concerning cultural and historical representations of sexualities, individuals’ lived experiences as sexual minorities and gender non-normative people, and what a “post-gender, post-sexual differences” future might look like. Our contributors discuss how these issues work both within and across national and cultural borders, reflecting on the connections between community, geography, and sexuality. Rachel E. Sullivan’s “The (Mis)translation of Masculine Femininity in Rural Space: (Re)reading ‘Queer’ Women in Northern Ontario, Canada” provides a fascinating case study of the experiences of queer women in rural Canada. Many queer women in these communities, Sullivan demonstrates, often find their sexual identities “misread” and their queerness rendered invisible to their neighbors and fellow community members. These misreadings, as Sullivan’s extensive interviews with these women reveal, have complex implications for women’s romantic, sexual, and professional lives. Kim Hackford-Peer’s essay “Queer and Trivial Tidbits: History’s Role in Projects of Self-Recognition for LGBT/Queer Youth” also tackles questions of queer individuals’ day-to-day lives and experiences in a heteronormative society. A valuable reflection how LGBT history is (and is not) encountered by and taught to queer youth, Hackford-Peer notes that young queer people often encounter LGBT history in the form of trivia about noteworthy LGBT people. This information, though useful in its ability to raise awareness about the presence of queer people in public life, nonetheless also frequently perilously oversimplifies LGBT figures’ lives, and risks shoving “ordinary” LGBT individuals’ experiences and struggles to the margins. In addition to LGBT people’s experiences in their communities and classrooms, this issue also deals with individuals’ experiences within the medical system. Elizabeth Manning’s “F*cking with the Canadian Guidelines on Sexually Transmitted Infections: A Queer Disruption to Homonormativity” addresses how people of sexualities perceived as non-traditional (particularly transgendered and intersex individuals) frequently face marginalization and discrimination from doctors, hospitals, and insurance providers. This oppression stems, Manning demonstrates, not purely from heteronormative models, but also from homonormative models which normalize gay men and lesbian women’s needs and experiences, while erasing those of trans and intersex people. The authors published in this issue also address questions of how representations of sexualities in literature and culture can shape conceptions and practices of sexuality. Gisela Norat’s “Subverting the Gag Order: Pregnancy in Contemporary Hispanic Women's Literature” ably considers the persistent silences surrounding representations of Hispanic women’s pregnancies in a diverse assortment of literary genres. Numerous female novelists, playwrights, and memoirists have recently dared to challenge this taboo in their literary work, and to provide uncompromising, realistic visions of what it means to be a pregnant Hispanic woman in a culture with deeply conflicted ideas about sexuality and motherhood. Lucy Nicholas’ “A Radical Queer Utopian Future: A Reciprocal Relation beyond Sexual Difference” thoughtfully considers what a future in which the categories of sexual orientation and difference might look like. Analyzing representations of such societies in feminist and queer theory, as well as in feminist science fiction, Nicholas assesses both the useful and the problematic aspects of these texts and ideologies. As is the case with all feminist scholarship, the pieces published in this issue are not intended to lie quietly on the page. Much as these articles, essays, and reviews grapple with crucial issues of identity, politics, and activism, we hope that you will take the opportunity to actively join in the discussion about the vital questions which these pieces raise. We encourage you to visit the “Comments” section of our journal and share your thoughts with our authors, with us, and with one another. (If you’re not already a registered user of our site, signing up is easy– for more information, see our readers page (http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/information/readers or hit “Register” above.) We hope that the discussions which our authors have begun here will continue in your scholarship, your classrooms, and your conversations with your students, colleagues, partners, and friends.