Sex Panic Rhetorics, Queer Interventions

“Sex Panic Rhetorics is a provocative and engaging read, making an original and significant contribution to the fields of rhetorical studies, feminist theory, and queer studies.”
—Jeffrey A. Bennett, author of Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance
 

“Sex Panic Rhetorics is timely, well conceived and orchestrated, providing fresh perspective on the ‘stubbornness of old antiqueer mindsets and practices’ manifest in the rhetorics of sex panics and their enabling (neo-) liberal discourses and ideologies, and ‘excavation of queerphobia’ at the heart of them.”
—Charles E. Morris III, coeditor of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking

“Barnard does a good job of addressing sex panic in several different categories: child molester panic, sex trafficking panic, transgender panic, incest panic, queer kids, and pedagogy panic. The book takes on a personal and intimate stance while addressing stigmatized topics, creating an alternative space for readers to address “socially dangerous topics” in a safe and academic manner. This book will be a valuable resource for those interested in gender, sociology, psychology, and queer studies. Recommended.”
—CHOICE

"One of the most enjoyable things about this text is how beautifully written it is. Each word is carefully selected to jump off the page and excite the reader.... The ties between sex panics (which seemingly have nothing to do with queerness) and queerphobia revealed by Sex Panic Rhetorics are intriguing and excite many new questions.... Our job as intellectuals is thus twofold: we must both defend and critique. We can align ourselves with liberalism in the face of alt right conspiracies while simultaneously recognizing that liberalism is not enough. This is what the book’s subtitle means: 'Queer interventions’ help us to envisage, identify, think through, and parse these differences and overlaps' (175). A seemingly utopic impulse to continue critiquing for a better world is found within queer. Perhaps this is really Sex Panic Rhetorics’ biggest takeaway. Never give up hope, never stop critiquing."
—Quarterly Journal of Speech