ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates a vision of gender and self-identity complicated by illness, with ‘gendered norms’ rejected in favour of intentionally distorted gender identities. Illness is stigmatising, meaning that those people who are unable to maintain an appearance of wholeness and coherence, be it in the body, mind or gender, are seen as ambiguous, problematic, polluting and ultimately dangerous. Within the Western world, the idea of ambiguity regarding gender is seen as something ‘other’ than the norm, something that is ‘dangerous’ and ‘deeply problematic’. For someone being engendered ‘female’ there may be significant issues around having to choose between being the ‘good girl’ or the ‘powerful women’. Freddie Mercury’s own self-representation of gender was complicated by illness and also by being homosexual, and as Butler explained, within the media there is a ‘hysterical and homophobic response’ to AIDS meaning that the disease becomes ‘a specific modality of homosexual pollution’.
