This ground-breaking open access collection tackles polarisations around sexualities and genders and in doing so, it opens out debates and discussions to reflect on how people live them, including and moving beyond social movements and political debates.
Anti-gender and heteroactivist movements have become increasingly recognized as key political groups in the last decade, driving resistances that often respond to LGBTQI+ inclusion. How these divisions are felt and experienced is under-explored.
Crossing a variety of geographical contexts, including the USA, Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain, Polarising Sexualities and Genders brings together leading and emerging scholars in multiple disciplines to explore, theorise and hope for change in social, legal, and political sexual/gendered/LGBTQIA+ landscapes. Examples include polarisation in media coverage and legislative debates about gender and transgender rights in the US and UK, to the possibility of occupying a sexual borderlands, the changing language for LGBTQIA+identities within the US, and the ways in which new discourses emerge to capture sexual lives. Through these case studies, the book explores how polarizing discourses and sociopolitical landscape shape the lived experiences, divisions, and marginalizations among LGBTQIA+ people in places including Lithuania and the southern United States.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.
Introduction: Polarising Sexualities and Genders: An Introduction Ch. 1: ‘Gender Debate’ Discourse: Scaremongering, Bigoted or Validating? - Elizabeth Peel, Loughborough University, UK Ch. 2: Misinformation and the ‘Gender Wars’ in Britain: Affective Attachments in the Use and Misuse of Evidence - Sarah Lamble, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Ch. 3: Pro- and Anti-Trans Frameworks: Debating Transgender Athlete Bans in U.S. State Legislatures - Elizabeth Rahilly, Georgia Southern University, USA Ch. 4: Contesting and Constructing the Gender Binary in Texas - Erika Slaymaker, The University of Texas at Austin, USA Ch. 5: Spatio-legalities of Silence: Queer Legal Geographies of Voice and Voicelessness in International LGBTQ Rights Law - Kay Lalor, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Ch. 6: How Have Identity Discourses on Gender, Abortion and Migration Become Key Battlegrounds for Populist Social Movements and Political Parties? A Comparative, Socio-legal Analysis Across Europe and Latin America - Silvia Gagliardi, Fiat project, European Research Council, UCD Ch. 7: Butch/Femme Dykes to Trans and Queer Folx: Why Time and Space Create Discord from Talking in Types - S. L. Crawley, University of South Florida, USA Ch. 8: Bye and Bi: Locating Bisexuals Amid In-Group and Out-Group Biphobia - Connor B.S. Strobel, University of Chicago, USA Ch. 9: We Are Just Like Everybody Else: Legitimization Strategies of Same-sex Sexualities within Lithuanian National(ist) Discourses, Rasa Kamarauskaite, UCL, UK Ch 10: Transgender Marginalization: Effectiveness of Policy Interventions in South India - Dr Reshma Thomas, Dr Rajalakshmi Nadadur, Michigan State University, USA Ch 11: ""We're Not Going Anywhere"": Visibility, Joy, and Solidarity Among Black Transgender Women in the U.S. South - Kimya Loder, Stanford University, USA Chapter 12: Working ‘Beyond Opposition’: Creating Artist-Led Workshops with those fundamentally disagree about Sexualities, Genders and Abortion - Carol Ballantine, Kath Browne, University College Dublin, Ireland, and Leah Hillard, NCAD, Ireland Chapter 13: Religious Hostility and the Making of Minority/Majority Boundaries in U.S. Federal Religious Exemption Litigation - Emily Kazyak, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA Chapter 14: Concluding thoughts Bibliography Index
Kath Browne is a Professor of Geography at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research has focused on social justice and inequalities, specifically around gender and sexualities. She has published Liveable Lives (Bloomsbury, 2023), Heteroactivism (Bloomsbury, 2020) and After Repeal (Bloomsbury, 2020). Emily Kazyak is Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. Her research focuses on laws related to sexuality and gender as well as on the family relationships of LGBTQ people.
Reviews for Polarising Sexualities and Genders: Divisions, Differences and LGBTQIA+ Equalities
This wonderfully thoughtful and engaging book addresses the complexities of polarisation within contemporary gender and sexual politics. With contributions from leading scholars, it avoids easy conclusions, and sparkles. An important contribution to current debates. * Davina Cooper, King’s College London, UK * This volume provides a valuable overview of thinking and research about forms of polarization related to LGBTQIA+ lives and movements. It challenges readers to consider the nature of such polarization and indeed to examine the utility and meaning of the concept of polarization as applied to LGBTQIA+ issues. Taken together, the chapters traverse time periods from the late 20th century to the present and a range of geographic locations, giving consideration to forms of polarization within LGBTQIA+ communities as well as more familiar divisions between advocates and opponents of LGBTQIA+ rights. The book demonstrates how polarization related to LGBTQIA+ issues does not always map neatly onto existing left/right political divisions. * Kathy Hull, University of Minnesota, USA *
