The Very Quintessence of Persecution

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (138) ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Rosa Hamilton

Abstract This article argues that a uniquely queer anti-fascism emerged in the early 1970s led by transgender and gender-nonconforming people and cisgender lesbians against postwar fascism in western Europe. In Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, queer anti-fascists drew on influences from Black Power, Women’s Liberation, and Marxism to connect fascism to everyday oppression under capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. Using oral histories, private collections, and against-the-grain archival research, this article is the first transnational study of queer anti-fascism and the first to view it as a discrete phenomenon. Queer anti-fascists showed what a radical and inclusive anti-fascism should look like, while their structural analysis of everyday fascism demonstrated why anti-fascism must mean social revolution. For them, queerness was necessarily antifascist: queer people’s common experience of oppression enabled them to understand and overthrow fascism and the existing order. Although they never disappeared, their marginalization by cisgender-heterosexual antifascists should warn antifascists today.

Author(s):  
Kayla M. Martensen ◽  
Beth E. Richie

Prison abolition as an American movement, strategy, and theory has existed since the establishment of prison as the primary mode of punishment. In many of its forms, it is an extension of abolition movements dating back to the inception of slavery. The long-term goal of prison abolition is for all people to live in a safe, liberated, and free world. In practice, prison abolition values healing and accountability, suggesting an entirely different way of living and maintaining relationships outside of oppressive regimes, including that of the prison. Prison abolition is concerned with the dismantling of the prison–industrial complex and other oppressive institutions and structures, which restrict true liberation of people who have been marginalized by those in power. These structures include white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and ablest and heteronormative ideologies. The origins of the prison regime are both global and rooted in history with two fundamental strategies of dominance, the captivity of African-descended peoples, and the conquest of Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples, land and resource. Similarly, the origins of prison abolition begin with the resistance of these systems of dominance. The contemporary prison abolition movement, today, is traced to the Attica Prison Uprising in 1971 when incarcerated people in the New York prison rebelled and demanded change in the living conditions inside prison. The nature of the uprising was different from prior efforts, insofar as the organizers’ demands were about fundamental rights, not merely reforms. Throughout the history of abolition work, there is continuous division between reform and abolition organizers. When the lives, voices, and leadership of the people most impacted by the violence of these oppressive regimes is centered, there is minimal space for discussion of reform. Throughout the abolition movement in America, and other western cultures, the leadership of Black, Indigenous, women, and gender-nonconforming people of color play a pivotal role. By centering the experiences of those most vulnerable, abolitionists understand prison does not need to be reformed and is critical of fashionable reforms and alternatives to prisons which are still rooted in carceral logic.


Author(s):  
Ashley D. Farmer

During the Black Power era, ordinary black women from all walks of life developed critical appraisals of the race, class, and gender constructs that governed their lives. They also advanced new ideas about what life might look like if they escaped the crushing weight of white supremacy. Black domestic workers, members of the Black Panther Party, and Black Power feminists all consistently and collectively imagined a new world and their role within it. Yet historical narratives continue to reinforce the idea that black men were the only ones capable of conjuring up new identities and idealized societies. Or, as scholar-activist Angela Davis put it in an October 2013 speech, we are still unable to “imagine and acknowledge what must have been, among these Black women domestic workers, this amazing collective imagination of a future world without racial and gender and economic oppression.”...


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Pelts ◽  
David L. Albright ◽  
Justin T. McDaniel ◽  
Sandra Laski ◽  
Kelli Godfrey

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Billies

The work of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC), a participatory action research (PAR) project that looks at how low income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LG-BTGNC) people survive and resist violence and discrimination in New York City, raises the question of what it means to make conscientization, or critical consciousness, a core feature of PAR. Guishard's (2009) reconceptualization of conscientization as “moments of consciousness” provides a new way of looking at what seemed to be missing from WWRC's process and analysis. According to Guishard, rather than a singular awakening, critical consciousness emerges continually through interactions with others and the social context. Analysis of the WWRC's process demonstrates that PAR researchers doing “PAR deep” (Fine, 2008)—research in which community members share in all aspects of design, method, analysis and product development—should have an agenda for developing critical consciousness, just as they would have agendas for participation, for action, and for research.


Author(s):  
Joseph Plaster

In recent years there has been a strong “public turn” within universities that is renewing interest in collaborative approaches to knowledge creation. This article draws on performance studies literature to explore the cross-disciplinary collaborations made possible when the academy broadens our scope of inquiry to include knowledge produced through performance. It takes as a case study the “Peabody Ballroom Experience,” an ongoing collaboration between the Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, the Peabody Institute BFA Dance program, and Baltimore’s ballroom community—a performance-based arts culture comprising gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, and gender-nonconforming people of color.


Author(s):  
Heather L. Armstrong

Sexual disorders and dysfunction are common among people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. And while definitions and conceptions of sexual health are typically broad, the clinical and research perspectives on sexual function and dysfunction have traditionally relied on the four-phase model of sexual response and disorders are generally classified as “male” or “female.” This chapter reviews the diagnostic criteria for specific sexual dysfunctions and presents a summary of existing research among sexual and gender minority populations. Overall, research on sexual dysfunction among sexual and gender minority people is limited, and this is especially true for transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. Understanding these often complex disorders requires that individuals, clinicians, and researchers consider a range of biopsychosocial factors that can affect and be affected by one’s sexual health and sexuality.


Author(s):  
Jill C. Fodstad ◽  
Rebecca Elias ◽  
Shivali Sarawgi

Gender diversity refers to gender expressions and/or gender identity experiences that vary from the common experiences of gender. Gender-diverse people may be gender nonconforming, gender nonbinary, gender fluid, gender exploring, transgender, and so forth. Some gender-diverse individuals experience gender dysphoria and/or gender incongruence and may require gender-affirming supports, including gender-affirming medical interventions. The co-occurrence of autism and gender diversity has been highlighted in a series of studies internationally as well as through rich community expressions. Studies in gender-referred individuals reveal high rates of autism traits as well as high rates of existing autism diagnoses. Studies in autistic populations reveal greater gender diversity characteristics. The long-term course of gender diversity in autistic individuals is poorly understood. Clinical guidelines have been developed for adolescents with the co-occurrence, but much work remains: No gender-related measures have been developed and tested for use in neurodiverse populations, no programs exist to support gender-diverse neurodiverse adults, and little is known about co-occurring mental health profiles, risks, or protective factors for people with the co-occurrence. The inclusion of this chapter on co-occurring autism and gender diversity within a book on “co-occurring psychiatric conditions” is problematic, because gender diversity is not a “psychiatric condition,” but instead a form of human diversity. The diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria is useful only insomuch as it allows individuals to obtain necessary gender-related supports. The authors’ choice to include this chapter in this book reflects a compromise, motivated by the need for educating both autism and gender specialists in this common co-occurrence.


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