ABSTRACT
The genre's convention of re-imagining worlds with different social and cultural values, revising even the laws of physics through magic, opens a space for the representation of worlds that challenge sexist and homophobic assumptions. Anne Balay discusses the suppression of all sexuality in YA fantasy literature, and the ways that this very sexuality can pervade the fantasy text at a symbolic level. The gendering of magic in this world is dislocated from the gendered body; that is, men and women can use these magics. This chapter argues that gender is performative rather than natural and that this is nowhere more obvious than when it is performed by the opposite' sex, as in drag. It examines how a nuanced magical framework, one that blurs binary distinctions between self and other, can facilitate a renegotiation of gender identities and queer relationships.
