Editing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (section)

===Homoerotic interpretations===
According to Queer scholar Richard Zeikowitz, the Green Knight represents a threat to [[homosocial]] friendship in his medieval world. Zeikowitz argues that the narrator of the poem seems entranced by the Knight's beauty, homoeroticising him in poetic form. The Green Knight's attractiveness challenges the homosocial rules of King Arthur's court and poses a threat to their way of life. Zeikowitz also states that Gawain seems to find Bertilak as attractive as the narrator finds the Green Knight. Bertilak, however, follows the homosocial code and develops a friendship with Gawain. Gawain's embracing and kissing Bertilak in several scenes thus represents not a homosexual but a homosocial expression. Men of the time often embraced and kissed, and this was acceptable under the chivalric code. Nonetheless, Zeikowitz claims the Green Knight blurs the lines between male homosociality and homosexuality, presumed knowledge of premodern artistic portrayals of female homosociality and homosexuality being largely doubtful, representing the difficulty medieval writers sometimes had in separating the two.<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.2307/3250731| issn = 0010-0994| volume = 65| issue = 1| pages = 67–80| last = Zeikowitz| first = Richard E.| title = Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes| journal = College English| date = 2002| url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/3250731| jstor = 3250731}}</ref>

Queer scholar [[Carolyn Dinshaw]] argues that the poem may have been a response to accusations that [[Richard II of England|Richard II]] had a male lover—an attempt to re-establish the idea that heterosexuality was the Christian norm. Around the time the poem was written, the Catholic Church was beginning to express concerns about kissing between males. Many religious figures were trying to make the distinction between strong trust and friendship between males and homosexuality. She asserts that the Pearl Poet seems to have been simultaneously entranced and repulsed by homosexual desire. According to Dinshaw, in his other poem ''Cleanness'', he points out several grievous sins, but spends lengthy passages describing them in minute detail, and she sees this alleged 'obsession' as carrying over to ''Gawain'' in his descriptions of the Green Knight.<ref name="dinshaw1994">{{Cite journal| doi = 10.2307/465173| issn = 0300-7162| volume = 24| issue = 2/3| pages = 205–226| last = Dinshaw| first = Carolyn| title = A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight| journal = Diacritics| date = 1994| url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/465173| jstor = 465173}}</ref>

Beyond this, Dinshaw proposes that Gawain can be read as a woman-like figure. In her view, he is the passive one in the advances of Bertilak's wife, as well as in his encounters with Bertilak himself, where he acts the part of a woman in kissing the man. However, while the poem does have homosexual elements, these elements are brought up by the poet to establish heterosexuality as the normal lifestyle of Gawain's world. The poem does this by making the kisses between the Lady and Gawain sexual in nature but rendering the kisses between Gawain and Bertilak "unintelligible" to the medieval reader. In other words, the poet portrays kisses between a man and a woman as having the possibility of leading to sex, while in a heterosexual world, kisses between a man and a man are portrayed as having no such possibility.<ref name=dinshaw1994/>