‘In Sweden, girls are allowed to kiss girls, and boys are allowed to kiss boys’: Pride Järva and the inclusion of the ‘LGBT other’ in Swedish nationalist discourses

Sexualities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 674-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Kehl
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Gay Pride ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

This article discusses Pride Järva, a ‘gay pride’ march organised by right-wing publicist Jan Sjunnesson in Stockholm’s northern suburbs. Analysing the event, and in particular a speech made by Sjunnesson during the parade in July 2016, I argue that it is indicative of the specific ways in which right-wing actors in Europe increasingly enlist LGBT rights in nationalist, xenophobic and racist projects of exclusion. As markers of tolerant and progressive ‘Europeanness’, they are used to construct and reproduce dangerous racialised and Islamic others along lines of sexuality and gender, a narrative that resonates with established notions of Swedish gender exceptionalism as well as homonationalist-orientalist narratives of threat and protection. Despite their history of actively opposing the expansion of LGBT rights, Sjunnesson and his political associates combine these narratives with a conceptualisation of LGBT issues as private and depoliticised to produce themselves as the ‘true’ protectors of LGBT rights in Sweden.

The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Queer Cinema ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender

Queer media is not one thing but an ensemble of at least four moving variables: history, gender and sexuality, geography, and medium. Although many scholars would pinpoint the early 1990s as marking the emergence of a cinematic movement in the United States (dubbed by B. Ruby Rich the “new queer cinema”), films and television programs that clearly spoke to LGBTQ themes and viewers existed at many different historical moments and in many different forms: cross-dressing, same-sex attraction, comedic drag performance; at some points, for example, in 1950s television, these were not undercurrents but very prominent aspects of mainstream cultural production. Addressing “history” not as dots on a progressive spectrum but as an uneven story of struggle, the writers in this volume stress that queer cinema did not appear miraculously at one moment but arrived on currents throughout the century-long history of the medium. Likewise, while queer is an Anglophone term that has been widely circulated, it by no means names a unified or complete spectrum of sexuality and gender identity, just as the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup struggles to contain the distinctive histories, politics, and cultural productions of trans artists and genderqueer practices. Across the globe, media-makers have interrogated identity and desire through the medium of cinema through rubrics that sometimes vigorously oppose the Western embrace of the pejorative term queer, foregrounding instead indigenous genders and sexualities or those forged in the Global South or those seeking alternative epistemologies. Finally, though “cinema” is in our title, many scholars in this collection see this term as an encompassing one, referencing cinema and media in a convergent digital environment. The lively and dynamic conversations introduced here aspire to sustain further reflection as “queer cinema” shifts into new configurations.

Sexual and Gender Minorities and Bullying in Japan

2016 ◽  
pp. 185-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Makiko Kasai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
Gender Reassignment ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Bullying Experiences

Japan does not have a cultural history of strong stigma against homosexuality and gender nonconformity in the ways that are true in West, but there is growing evidence that homophobia and transphobia do exist. In this chapter, the history of LGBT issues in Japan is overviewed, focusing mainly on the experiences of gay men and lesbians. Lately, more LGBT-related research has focused on studies on persons with gender identity disorder (GID) due to the approval of gender reassignment surgery as a treatment for GID. Many studies showed that sexual minority youth reported suicidal wishes or behavior because of bullying experiences, feelings of isolation, physical dysphoria, or internal homophobia or transphobia. Moreover, most teachers reported that they did not include any material on LGBT issues in classroom, thus highlighting an urgent need to educate school teachers on these issues.

Historical Views of Homosexuality: Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Rich ◽  
Andi Dahmer ◽  
Isabel Eliassen
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
National Level ◽  
The West ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Transgendered People ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Lgbt Community ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
History Of ◽  
Antidiscrimination Policies

How does Asia compare to other regions in terms of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights? While Asia lags behind the West on typical metrics of LGBT rights, this fails to capture the diversity of tolerance historically in the region. At the same time, conservative backlashes to LGBT policies are evident across the region, often invoking traditionalist or religious opposition, as also seen outside of the region. Moreover, much of the literature myopically focuses on one or two countries in Asia, rarely attempting to make broad comparisons across East, South, and Central Asia. Part of this is due to terminology differences, where “homosexual” is commonly used in some countries as a catch-all term for members of the LGBT community, compared to others in the region countries, especially in South Asia, with a longer history of specialized terminology for transgendered people. Yet broader comparisons in the absence of terminology differences remain rare despite growing attention to LGBT issues in public opinion polls, news, and academic work and despite the fact that the legal avenues chosen by LGBT rights proponents often mirror those chosen in the West. State policies on LGBT policies also range considerably in the region, with only Taiwan currently recognizing same-sex marriage at the national level, but with decriminalization and antidiscrimination policies at the national and local levels increasingly common. However, a commonly overlooked trend is that of harsher LGBT policies enacted by local governments. Meanwhile, despite trends in the West of growing public tolerance on LGBT issues, far less consistency emerges in Asia, further complicating state efforts. It is important to highlight Asia’s diversity in terms of rights and tolerance, but it is equally important to integrate evidence from Asia into cross-national research on LGBT issues to understand what is unique about the region and what may have been ignored in other regions.

Crossing borders in transnational gender history

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Matter Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Migration ◽  
New Research

AbstractTransnational history and the history of gender and sexuality have both been concerned with the issue of borders and their crossing, but the two fields themselves have not intersected much in the past. This is beginning to change, and this article surveys recent scholarship that draws on both fields, highlighting work in six areas: movements for women’s and gay rights; diverse understandings of sexuality and gender; colonialism and imperialism; intermarriage; national identity and citizenship; and migration. This new research suggests ways in which the subject matter, theory, and methodology in transnational history and the history of gender and sexuality can interconnect: in the two fields’ mutual emphasis on intertwinings, relationships, movement, and hybridity; their interdisciplinarity and stress on multiple perspectives; and their calls for destabilization of binaries.

Making LGBT Rights into Human Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Langlois
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International System ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Status ◽  
Un General Assembly ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Key Aspects

This chapter commences by examining the status LGBT rights have achieved within the United Nations (UN) human rights system and reviews some key aspects of their trajectory. It considers how best to interpret the varying roles LGBT rights can play in the international system, given their new status, with a critical reading of Hillary Clinton’s famous and much lauded “gay rights are human rights” speech to the UN General Assembly in 2011. It then moves on to what LGBT rights as human rights might mean in those parts of the world where this status receives little if any formal institutional recognition, using the case of the Southeast Asian region, where a new human rights regime has been established but where non-normative sexuality and gender have been willfully excluded from its remit. The chapter considers what the politics of human rights mean for sexuality and gender-diverse people in this region with reference to two senses in which human rights claims are political: (1) activists and advocates push against the status quo to have sexuality and gender issues included in the human rights discussion and (2) resistance to this inclusion is often played out by a politicization of sexuality and gender that obscures other pressing issues. This chapter demonstrates both the profound and important advances that have been made for LGBT individuals and communities and the ways in which these successes generate political dynamics of their own, which must be carefully navigated in order to sustain the emancipatory potential of the movement.

Queering Scholarship?

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Markus Thiel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Lgbt Politics ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

With the emergence of global LGBT issues as focal points for domestic and international politics, a theoretical examination of their impact on scholarship becomes necessary in order to broaden international relations (IR) and political science and re-evaluate some of the central tenets and concepts in those disciplines. LGBT politics are often theorized in LGBT studies, which more conventionally trace the impact of such politics, but also increasingly in queer studies, which advance critical, deconstructive perspectives stemming from sexuality and gender. The author asks why LGBT and queer studies have not made earlier inroads into IR and political science, accounts for the theoretical as well as methodological challenges that LGBT politics pose for those disciplines, and highlights some of the open questions that remain to be answered in the future.

scholarly journals A Sentimental and Sexual Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 216-242
Author(s):  
Anne Rubenstein
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Sex Partners ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sex With Men ◽  
Heterosexual Sex

Alongside all the other functions of movie theaters over the past century, in Mexico City men have used them as sexual spaces. A few cinemas like the Cine Teresa became notorious as sites in which men could find male sex partners. Yet even there, behaviors of and narratives by men who had sex with men mirrored those by men who had sex with women. This article focuses on the history of masculine sexuality in Mexico City movie houses from 1920 to 2010. The presence of women in these houses, either as workers, on the screen, or in men’s memories, along with the presence of men who went there to watch heterosexual sex on the movie screen, suggests that moviegoing in Mexico City can be analyzed through the lens of gender history as much as through that of the history of sexuality. Despite major social, cultural and technological changes over the twentieth century, examining movie audiences in terms of the histories of sexuality and gender reveals a startling amount of continuity in movie theaters as spaces of male sexuality.

A retrospective of LGBT issues on US college campuses: 1990–2020

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rankin ◽  
Jason C Garvey ◽  
Antonio Duran
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Gender Minority ◽  
Lgbt Issues ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Sexual And Gender Minority ◽  
And Gender

In this brief retrospective of LGBT issues on US College Campuses: 1990–2020, the authors first review the extensive changes in the language used to ‘define’ people within these communities. Given the fluid and evolving language used in sexual and gender minority communities, it is crucial to examine how community members are named and who is centered as a result of this naming. The authors use the terms queer-spectrum and trans-spectrum to honor how individuals choose to identify themselves as opposed to placing them into socially constructed, fixed categories of sexuality and gender. Next, they explore how the climate has changed in higher education to support queer-spectrum and trans-spectrum students. Finally, the authors examine the research on how queer-spectrum and trans-spectrum students experience their campuses and the climate’s influence on specific outcomes. This retrospective contends that higher education scholars must continue to examine outcomes that will facilitate success for queer- and trans-spectrum student populations.

scholarly journals East and West in Zakia Khairhoum's the End of My Dangerous Secret

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Youssef EL KAIDI
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
History Of Literature

Literature is an arena for cross-cultural representation par excellence. It is in the literature that images produce an awareness of the Self and Other, and of the Here and the Elsewhere, however small that awareness maybe. The accounts of many canonical literary figures in the history of literature featured portrayals and descriptions of radically different people and customs, exotic lands, and far-off places where everything is outlandish and anomalous. Literary representation, therefore, plays a pivotal role in shaping perception, creating historical and textual monoliths, stereotypes, and essentialization about ethnic minorities, race, sexuality, and gender. This article investigates the politics of representation of the Self and the Other in Zakia Khairhoum’s novel The End of My Dangerous Secret (Nihayat Sirri L’khatir, 2008) from a postcolonial feminist’s point of view. I argue that Khairhoum does not only shatter the foundations of patriarchy in the Arab world but also undermines and subverts Western colonial discourse and its claim of supremacy. The novel foregrounds a different pattern of representation that has not yet been sufficiently investigated, which is the denigration of both the Self and the Other and the quest for a third cultural reality that is defined in terms of gender equality, justice, human rights and democracy.

scholarly journals ‘Now—for a breath I tarry’: Breath, Desire, and Queer Materialism at the fin de siècle

2021 ◽  
pp. 345-365
Author(s):  
Fraser Riddell
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Embodied Subjectivity ◽  
Magnus Hirschfeld ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractRiddell explores how tropes of breath and breathlessness articulate the relationship between materiality, desire, and loss for queer subjects in Victorian literature. The essay presents readings of A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, John Addington Symonds’s Memoirs, and Walter Pater’s ‘Sebastian van Storck’ (from Imaginary Portraits). It also examines nineteenth-century sexology (including writings by Magnus Hirschfeld) to demonstrate how certain modes of breathing were directly associated with non-normative sexuality in the period. Riddell draws upon insights from contemporary queer theory, in its turns toward negative affect and phenomenology, to examine precarious forms of embodied subjectivity in the history of homosexuality. By doing so, he demonstrates how experiences of embodiment are never universal but closely bound up with individual subject positions (such as sexuality and gender).

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