Panel and community discussion on the politics of creating, collecting and using material culture to examine LGBTQ+ history with Tom Antonik, Robert Diamante and Brody Wood, facilitated by Ryan Conrad. This event was held on April 30, 2016 at the University of Southern Maine and was sponsored by USM's Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine LGBT Collection.
This chapter delves into social policy and welfare regarding intimate partner violence (IPV) across North America, specifically around research, policies, and treatment interventions for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. In this chapter, we outline the problem of intimate partner violence, or IPV, in the USA; analyze IPV policies at the state and national levels; and advocate for more specific treatment interventions to address the unique needs of this community.
The purpose of this research was to examine the reintegration experiences of female service members who deployed in a Post 9/11 war and identify with the LGBTQ community. The study employed a mixed methods survey to gather information from two female service members regarding their identification with the LGBTQ community before, during, and after deployment as well as their challenges and supports post deployment. Reponses from the survey were analyzed and coded to develop themes. The themes that emerged included pre-coming out, coming out, and post coming out. These theme outlined how the coming out process aligned with the deployment experiences of participants. Participants consistently identified frequent challenges during reintegration in balancing multiple roles, relationships, and mental health as well as receiving support from military leadership, peers, and military and civilian organizations. Future research is needed to better understand this unique population and provide direction for policy and social work practice.
Through waves of chain migration in the first-half of the twentieth century, and more recently in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis, Argentina and Italy have shared interconnected historical cultural ties with increasing numbers of dual citizens. In this way "lo porteño," the identity associated with Buenos Aires, has not been very different from "lo italiano" in their cultural intermeshing. This is not to say, however, that each nation does not hold its own unique traditions and histories. The fight for political visibility amongst the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Queer (LGBTQ) community has proved to be a schism between the two countries contemporarily. While each nation has a large Roman Catholic majority, nominally around 90%, which has obfuscated the distinction between public and private and impeded the LGBTQ cause politically, the Argentine journey to LGBTQ rights has been more efficacious. This paper posits some of the potential factors that have created a more inclusive democratic society in Argentina and more exclusionary political community in Italy. I examine the relationship between policy output and political culture to investigate the obstacles to achieving egalitarian legislation. I conclude with new ways of conceiving "difference" in postmodern democracies in light of these two countries' sociopolitical histories.
This dissertation focuses on the movement for LGBTQ inclusion within the Mennonite Church USA, a Christian denomination of just under 100,000 members. Mennonites are part of a nearly five century Christian tradition known as Anabaptism, known for an ethic of nonviolence. Yet Mennonite communities and institutions have been and continue to be sites of intense patriarchal and gendered interpersonal violence. While LGBTQ Mennonites and their supporters have been engaged in visible advocacy and grassroots organizing for the past forty years, they continue to struggle for recognition and acceptance within a denomination that mirrors many other U.S. Christian groups in its sharp divisions over sexual politics. Mennonites' polity tends towards congregational rather then hierarchical arrangements, and church policies are determined and debated at congregational, regional, and national levels through processes known as "discernment." Discernment is seen as a peaceful approach to settling communal conflict. But LGBTQ Mennonites often experience such processes as abusive and violent. Thus Mennonite conflicts over LGBTQ inclusion are also struggles over how violence should be defined. This study draws on interviews, oral histories, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival evidence from the past four decades, arguing that LGBTQ Mennonites and their allies have played an integral role in subverting and revealing the hidden abuses of power enabled by Mennonite communal discourses. It brings together a feminist and queer theory-based analysis of discursive violence with a critique of de-historicized multiculturalism in institutional life.
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code has criminalized homosexuality in India since 1861 when it was first instituted by the British government as a tool of governing the personal relations among native Indian populations. The law was retained in the Indian Constitution when it was drafted in 1948 after India gained Independence from the British. The law became the subject of reform during the early 1990s when it was seen to hamper HIV/AIDS outreach for vulnerable groups that were engaging in same-sex behavior that was criminalized under the law. The Indian LGBTQ movement emerged partly in response to the public health crisis and also as a challenge to the law's criminalization of various identities such as gay, lesbian and transgender. In 2009, the Delhi High Court amended Section 377 to decriminalize homosexuality by according a right to privacy, equality, dignity and non-discrimination to consenting adults. However, the Supreme Court of India overruled the Delhi High Court decriminalization decision in 2013 with the view that the law only criminalized certain "unnatural" acts, which could by committed by anyone. The Court ruled that the law did not target any identity or group in particular. This dissertation undertakes a critical examination of the right to privacy as the basis of homosexuality's provisional decriminalization in India during 2009-2013. Through an analysis of case law, human rights violation reports and film and media representations of privacy violations of LGBTQ subjects in India, the dissertation interrogates the material stakes in making privacy the central basis of homosexuality's legalization. Using archival analysis, textual interpretation, discourse analysis and interviews with lawyers and LGBTQ activists, the dissertation demonstrates how the exercise of the right to privacy by a violated figure entails greater visibility for the subject. The various forms of mediation of privacy violations produce greater visibility for the subject bringing them empowerment with potential vulnerability in the postcolonial Indian context in which homosexuality continues to be pathologized and criminalized. The dissertation draws upon media studies, queer theory and postcolonial studies in its analysis of the relationship among privacy, visibility and sexuality
The announcement of a new Health and Physical Education curriculum in 2010 by the Liberal McGuinty government resulted in considerable controversy in Ontario. Key religious groups, as well as socially and politically conservative groups, opposed the inclusion of queer-positive content in public education. This opposition ultimately led to the shelving of the proposed curriculum. However, under the Liberal Wynne government, a version similar to the original 2010 curriculum has been taught in schools since September 2015. This paper examines the struggle since the 1960s for curricular inclusiveness of the LGBTQ+ community in the Health and Physical Education curriculum document, and the arguments that have been used to censor the LGBTQ+ community. Ultimately, it was the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Ontario Human Rights Code that prevented censorship in education. Human rights legislation was used to uphold civil rights in both the Catholic and public school systems and rose above the political decision-making that had censored the LGBTQ+ community. RÉSUMÉ L'annonce d'un nouveau programme d'études en santé et en éducation physique, en 2010, par le gouvernement libéral McGuinty provoqua une énorme controverse en Ontario. Des groupes religieux fondamentalistes ainsi que des organismes sociopolitiques conservateurs se sont opposés à l'inclusion de contenu sur l'homosexualité dans les programmes d'enseigne- ment public. Cette opposition conduisit à une mise au rancart du programme. Cependant, sous le gouvernement libéral Wynn, une version similaire au programme original est enseignée dans les écoles depuis septembre 2015. Cette étude s'intéresse à la lutte—en marche depuis les années 1960—pour l'inclusion des membres de la communauté des LGBTQ+ dans les programmes d'études en santé et en éducation physique, ainsi qu'aux arguments utilisés pour censurer cette collectivité. Finalement, ce fut la Charte des droits et libertés et le Code des droits de la personne de l'Ontario qui empêchèrent la censure en éducation. On eut recours à la législation sur les droits de la personne pour soutenir les droits civils autant dans le système des écoles catholiques que dans celui des écoles publiques et supplanter les objections politiques qui censuraient les LGBTQ+.
This article investigates whether participation on Twitter during Toronto's 2014 WorldPride festival facilitated challenges to heteronormativity through increased visibility, connections, and messages about LGBTQ people. Analysis of 68,231 tweets found that surges in activity using WorldPride hashtags, connections among users, and the circulation of affective content with common symbols made celebrations visible. However, the platform's features catered to politicians, celebrities, and advertisers in ways that accentuated self-promotional, local, and often banal content, overshadowing individual users and the festival's global mandate. By identifying Twitter's limits in fostering the visibility of users and messages that circulate nonnormative discourses, this study makes way for future research identifying alternative platform dynamics that can enhance the visibility of diversity.
Ce rapport présente les résultats du sondage en ligne effectué dans le cadre du projet Chaque prof sur les perceptions et les expériences des éducatrices et éducateurs canadiens de la maternelle à la 12e année en matière d'« éducation inclusive des personnes LGBTQ ». Le sondage englobait les programmes d'études, les politiques et les pratiques comportant de l'information positive et exacte sur les personnes lesbiennes, gaies, bisexuelles, transgenres, bispirituelles et queers (ou allosexuelles), ainsi que les questions et enjeux reliés à la diversité sexuelle et de genre (aussi appelée « éducation inclusive de la diversité sexuelle et de genre »). Ce type d'éducation est axé sur l'inclusion d'élèves qui, autrement, seraient marginalisés dans des milieux scolaires habituellement hostiles aux élèves lesbiennes, gais, bisexuels, transgenres, bispirituels, queers ou en questionnement quant à leur orientation sexuelle ou leur identité de genre (LGBTQ), ou encore, aux élèves ayant des parents, des amis ou d'autres proches LGBTQ, ainsi qu'aux élèves hétérosexuels cisgenres pouvant être affectés directement ou indirectement par l'homophobie, la biphobie ou la transphobie. Le sondage a été mené auprès de milliers d'éducatrices et d'éducateurs au cours de l'année scolaire qui s'est terminée en juin 2013. La phase du projet portant sur les entrevues et les groupes de discussion du projet Chaque prof fera l'objet d'un rapport en 2016. ; "Nous tenons à souligner l'appui financier que nous avons reçu du Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (subvention ordinaire de recherche de trois ans no 410-2011— 0845, concours 2010), de la Manitoba Teachers' Society, de l'Université de Winnipeg et du Legal Research Institute de l'Université du Manitoba. Nous avons également reçu l'appui et des conseils du Fonds Égale Canada pour les droits de la personne, qui avait également financé le premier Sondage sur le climat national sur l'homophobie, la biphobie et la transphobie dans les écoles canadiennes. Nous remercions sa directrice Helen Kennedy, son directeur de la recherche, de la politique et du développement, Ryan Dyck, les membres du Comité de l'éducation Joan Beecroft, Jane Bouey et Miriam Greenblatt, ainsi que sa présidente, Sue Rose."
A 2012-2014 Gallup Poll reported that 4.4 percent of the population of Hampton Roads is LGBTQ in orientation. Available data suggest that LGBTQ women fare relatively better economically speaking than LGBTQ men. Norfolk and Virginia Beach are viewed as the region's friendliest cities for members of the LGBTQ community.
Unbecoming: Visibility Politics and Queer Rurality critically analyzes calls for LGBTQ people to be "out, loud, and proud" through examining representations, discourses, and experiences of LGBTQ women in the rural Midwestern United States. Drawing from cultural representations and interviews I conducted with fifty-one women in rural South Dakota and Minnesota, I suggest that an estrangement exists between the desires, logics, and strategies of LGBTQ women in the rural Midwest and those of gay rights movements. This estrangement points to the need to consider the ideologies undergirding and the ramifications of LGBTQ visibility politics. I make three interventions in the interdisciplinary study of visibility: I argue that calls for visibility are symptomatic of and enable metronormativity, that visibility politics reproduce both post-racial and what I term post-spatial ideologies, and, finally, that becoming recognizable as visible is a labored process, and, as such, calls for LGBTQ visibility, which relentlessly demand constant laboring, are a reflection of and benefit to capitalist logics. In doing so, I revise assumptions about the ostensible relations among gay community, identity, and visibility, question the notion that visibility leads to rights or justice, and challenge dominant conceptions of the nature of rural communities. Beyond examining the unbecoming-ness of visibility discourses, I suggest that an interrogation of visibility discourses explicates how one becomes (and might un-become) a sexual subject and can broaden possibilities for actualizing alternate subjectivities--sexual or otherwise.
This thesis offers a London-based contemporary study of sexuality at home. I draw from architectural history, feminist and queer theory as well as geographies of sexualities to interrogate the stability of domesticity. Highlighting everyday homemaking practices of more than 40 non-heterosexual households in London, I seek to complicate one overarching regime of power that dominates our cultural value system: heteronormativity – the idea that normative heterosexuality is the default sexuality to which everyone must conform or declare themselves against. The project is a response to three decades of academic research that has looked at the spatialised ways in which sexual identity unfolds in, for the most part, peripheral zones in the 'Western' metropolis, spaces beyond the domestic realm. This thesis takes a different architectural approach; one where through interviewing 47 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) Londoners, as well as eleven domestic tradespeople that work in these homes, agency is given to small-scale domestic interventions and everyday actions. The concept of 'queering' is important to the framework, which, in the context of the thesis, is understood as an on-going process that LGBTQ people are engaged in through homemaking and daily living. Although some participants may not see this as a political act, I argue otherwise and suggest queering at home is a form of political activism. Through mundane domestic actions the overarching structure of heteronormativity might be challenged. I contend that queering the home unfolds in various, complex and conflicting ways. The thesis seeks to provoke both queer theory and politics, by opening up existing approaches and remits to allow room for a domestic method. In addition, the thesis seeks to challenge assumptions within architecture but also in the wider sense. I aim to break down stereotypes surrounding non-heterosexual homemaking practices that architectural studies and media representations problematically reproduce.
This paper aims to understand the extent to which monogamy operates not only as a constitutive element of marriage-like institutions but also as a metajudicial source of frequently overlooked forms of state violence. Drawing on the case of the Spanish law, it explores the privilege-driven logic that regulates the access to a complex set of economic benefits and legal protections, including immigration related rights, in order to show the extent to which monogamy is part of the grounding structure of an exclusionary constitutional citizenship. In addition, drawing on semi-structured interviews held with Spanish poly activists and biographical interviews held with LGBTQ non-monogamous people, it offers a view of non-monogamous communities as paramount spaces of resistance when it comes to re-imagining the relationship between the state and the intimate realm, beyond the mere inclusion of poly and other non-monogamous intimate relationships in certain pieces of legislation.