This chapter draws together the concepts laid out in the book and the empirical evidence in support of the claims made. The chapter situates these considerations within a broader context of the ongoing geopolitical and regulatory instability of digital social life, and the vulnerability of LGBTQ communities’ political and social status. In doing so, the chapter asks key questions about the future balance between the rights of the digiqueer citizen and the obligations of states and corporations: How will the perspectives of LGBTQ communities be measured and evaluated? How will LGBTQ relationship, conduct and expression rights be maintained and expanded, and where and how might they contract to further authoritarian agendas as a form of informational warfare in the grey zone – the space in between peace and war in which state and non-state actors engage in competition – as threats from digital technologies outside of physical war zones increase? How will the big-tech companies respond to growing calls for more regulation, and litigation that finds them responsible for representational harms such as defamation, as part of the broader ‘techlash’?
This chapter synthesizes practitioner and academic literature on LGBTQ organizing in the pracademic tradition. It analyzes the ways that advocates, activists and allies ‘queer it up’ and harness digiqueer resistance through participatory and policy advocacy against challenges to diverse LGBTQ expression. This includes new rituals of LGBTQ organizing through hashtag activism, crowdfunding advocacy, philanthropy through non-fungible tokens, and the continued commodification of LGBTQ identity through ecommerce for advocacy and allyship. The chapter considers where LGBTQ networked expression sits within the digital organizing landscape. On one level, political insecurity through the ‘hate feedback loop’ keeps LGBTQ organizers in the policy ‘trenches’ as they maintain the fight for basic relationship, expression and conduct rights that the general public might take for granted. On another level, increased recognition of LGBTQ expression through popular culture, relationship rights such as same-sex marriage, and social networks sees a related expansion of the social imagination of homosexuality as identity rather than conduct across health and welfare, religion, securitization, markets, nationalism, a sense of belonging, and other identifiers.
The hybrid media ecosystem of older and newer digital media logics has amplified the pre-digital fault lines of anti-LGBTQ stigma, reinforcing aspects of hierarchical human value. This chapter further details the range of algorithmic representational harms confronting the digiqueer citizen – a consequence of sorting populations into measurable types for security and profit through digital surveillance technologies. Underscoring this algorithmic governance are opaque and often unlawful decision-making processes. The chapter analyses the ethical issues surrounding the pervasiveness of platform biometrics such as facial and gait recognition software, and the stigmatic imaginaries of the criminalization and medical pathologization of same-sex attraction. Integrating research into surveillance capitalism and algorithmic governance, the chapter situates the digiqueer citizen within the the historical, legal, technical and economic forces mediating new forms of identity practices.
This chapter analyses the mutual constitution of online hateful conduct against Drag Queen Storytime childhood literacy events in the US, and related conduct in Australia and the UK. The digiqueer focus of this chapter is to analyse the conflation of ‘Christian’ and ‘national’ ideology that pairs individual morality and national strength with the notion of sexual purity. This conflation is used as justification to censor fluid gender expression through hybrid protest. In doing so, the chapter documents the direct and indirect violence used to chill gender-fluid expression, including vilification, harassment, intimidation, alleged assault and malicious property damage, vexatious litigation, and antagonistic legislative proposals that restrict resourcing of public libraries and threaten librarians with jail terms. The chapter contributes to a growing body of literature that conceptualizes the link between men’s rights activist group subcultures within the broader ‘manosphere’, and how they may encourage and propagate violence.
This chapter presents the context and consequences of representational harms facing LGBTQ individuals and communities through the old and newer digital media logics of the hybrid media ecosystem. The chapter lays out the argument of the book and the evidence to support it; that representational harms – harms that ignore, criticize or blame minority communities, and in doing so, reinforce inequity – are a form of information warfare. This warfare is manifested through the manufacture of an imagined LGBTQ enemy, and the rationalization, normalization and monetization of stigma-driven marginalization based on that fiction. The transformation of cultural production through digital media platforms has restructured the terms by which culture is distributed and paid for. This transformation has revealed the workings of stigma-derived anti-LGBTQ economic and political purchase through the hybrid media ecosystem. The chapter identifies digiqueer criminology as an overarching framework through which to articulate the relationship between LGBTQ agency, and the technostructural forces that constrain or enable LGBTQ expression. In doing so, the chapter identifies the role of meaning making through knowledge production processes, the material value of identity, and its impact on securing LGBTQ relationship, conduct and expression rights. The chapter provides a summary of the chapters in the book.
This chapter analyses ongoing representational harms against same-sex attraction in general and, in particular, the continued anti-LGBTQ framing of male same-sex attraction as a threat to children. Representational harms against same-sex attraction include algorithmic intervention that censors same-sex attracted content, and surveillance and harassment of same-sex attracted peoples and organizations across jurisdictions. The recent amplification of framing that conflates same-sex attraction with ‘grooming’ through high-profile TikTok (Libs of TikTok), Instagram (@gaysagainstgroomers) and YouTube accounts, and opposition to LGBTQ-inclusive education initiatives are drawn upon to contextualize these harms. This is in addition to debate-related stress about legislative proposals such as surveys on same-sex marriage and restrictions on LGBTQ representation in education. The chapter suggests that macroeconomic approaches to identifying the intrinsic value of individuals based on their capacity might mitigate representational harms from information warfare. At the same time, this approach can perpetuate medico-legal categorizations based on stigmatized conduct rather than broader categorizations of identity.
Digital media technologies have enabled some LGBTQ individuals and communities to successfully organise for basic rights and justice. But these technologies can also present risks, such as online and in-person harassment and assault, and unsettled standards of privacy and consent.
Justin Ellis provides new insights on LGBTQ identity formation through social media networks and platform biometrics. Drawing on debate over gender, procreation, religion, nationalism and tech-regulation, he considers the effects of surveillance technologies on LGBTQ agency. In doing so, he brings an interdisciplinary ‘digiqueer’ perspective to negotiations of LGBTQ identity through case studies of digital harms from case law, parliamentary debates, social and mainstream media and LGBTQ-tech advocacy.
Following the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a new criminology of war developed, producing fresh insights and opening up original research streams. The incorporation of war within the remit of criminological analysis, advocated by classical as well as critical criminology, rapidly gained new momentum. The focus on asymmetrical conflicts and invasions unveiled the massive killing of civilians, bringing war into the arena of victimology. Moreover, the examination of the material forces that drive international conflicts situated such conflicts among the violent predatory offences that concern most criminological theories. The study of ‘war crimes’, ultimately, led some authors to shift attention towards ‘war as crime’. After briefly summarising the developments that shaped a criminology of war, this paper attempts further analytical steps towards the formulation of a criminology against war. A critique of the concept of ‘just wars’ is followed by the examination of the ambiguities that cloud the notions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Current legal provisions regulating international conflict are described as blank norms, while principles of peacebuilding are finally pinpointed.
This article synthesises literature on the evolution of domestic abuse (DA) refuges, with particular attention to the development of two models: the conventional or ‘underground’ refuge (UR) and the open or ‘Dutch’ refuge. The article will detail what the available evidence says about the benefits and drawbacks of these models and explore their implications for the DA sector in England, with reference to extending women’s space for action and meeting the needs of underserved victim-survivors.
The article argues that multiple models of provision are needed to meet the intersecting, complex and at times competing needs of different victim-survivors, and that available evidence provides preliminary support for the viability of the open model as part of a wider suite of responses to DA. Further research is needed to extend the evidence base on the open model, and to develop a whole system approach which can meet the needs of a wider range of victim-survivors.
