Dandy Discipleship: A Queering of Mark's Male Disciples‪.‬

The male disciples in Mark make an interesting case study for queer and gendered hermeneutics because of their ambiguous portrayal. What are we to make of the often flawed followers of Jesus who, within dominant imperial discourses regarding ancient Mediterranean gender, appear hopelessly short of achieving their masculinity? How too might we queer the text, so that in the production of meaning our interpretations are not constrained by oppressive constructions of gender and sexuality? This article seeks the liberation of the Markan text: firstly, from homophobic and erotophobic (2) interpretations, both conscious and unconscious, that work within the unacknowledged assumptions of heteronormativity; and, secondly, from interpretations that assume, again usually unacknowledged, that gender and sexuality is binary and essential. These two presuppositions underlie most conventional readings of Mark; however, they limit the text in a number of ways. On the one hand, they are anachronistic with regards to ancient Mediterranean understandings of gender and sexuality, and, on the other, they ignore contemporary queer and gender theorists such as Butler (1990) who, for example, considers gender as a performance measured against a set of culturally determined norms. Such readings are, in fact, not only perpetuated by essentialist interpretations dominant within both "hardcore" traditional and conservative Christianity, but constitute social reality itself which can be further articulated as the heteronormative meta-narrative.