Collection: LGBTQ+ Rights Collection
As a taster of our publishing in LGBTQ+ Rights, we put together a collection of free articles, chapters and Open Access titles. If you are interested in trying out more content from our Sociology Collection or Global Social Challenges themes, ask your librarian to sign up for a free trial.
LGBTQ+ Rights Collection
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 41 items
Putting disabled people in charge of their own support was a central component of the UK personalisation agenda. Austerity, staff recruitment difficulties and local authority retrenchment have meant that the experience for disabled people has not always lived up to the rhetorical promise. In this context, disabled people with marginalised sexual and/or gender identities face difficult choices in everyday interactions of support that trouble the idea that control routinely sits with them. In this article, we draw on two research studies with disabled people who use self-directed support in which they discuss navigating gender and sexual identity. In both studies, there are opportunities for disabled people to draw on support that is empowering, but we also hear about ‘bad bargains’ that they are sometimes forced to make. We argue that the hard-won goals of choice and control are being degraded and confronting LGBTQI+ and non-binary disabled people with sometimes impossible dilemmas.
This study explores how LGBTQ parents in Finland account for the role of financial resources in their family-forming process before the child is born or otherwise joins the family. Semi-structured, thematic, face-to-face interviews (n=18) were conducted, audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed with reflexive thematic analysis. The study expands our understanding of financial resources in the family-forming processes of prospective LGBTQ parents and identifies the diversity of the meanings of financial resources experienced by the informants. It can be stated that the role of financial resources appears not only as a concrete need for money to have children but also as a resource that influences decision making and legal aspects during LGBTQ family-forming processes. However, it is not enough to look only at resources; it is equally important to consider the capabilities of individuals. The reconfigurations of family relations were connected to financial decisions and the importance of society’s support in terms of financial resources was essential.
This chapter sets the stage for the volume by providing insights into the ways in which the intensification of trans-related activist engagement has manifested itself in the politically dynamic post-Yugoslav region. We start by entwining our biographical positionalities with major conceptual instruments of contemporary transnational trans studies to both account for the processes that brought us together and carve a niche for our book in Eastern European social sciences and humanities and, in particular, feminist research and queer and trans studies. We then outline the most important political developments through which trans activisms across the region have gained visibility and emancipated themselves from the more generic LGBT initiatives, also shedding a new light on trans lives and artistic endeavours. This has opened a field of political contention that both encompasses and goes beyond activist circles. As we introduce the central arguments of the ensuing chapters, we reflect upon the challenges of conceptual translation within a global economy of knowledge that centralises the Global North and especially Anglo-American trans studies. Facing an intellectual and political scene in which understanding global social relations becomes important for taking trans intellectual work forward, we argue in favour of transnationally informed, but locally embedded and intersectionally sensitive, empirical analysis.
How can queer criminology, a still developing discipline within the broader world of criminological research, help folx obtain agency? We contend that this question, along with the general yet obviously important question of ‘so what?’, are inquiries the contributors to this volume will help to answer (or perhaps they will develop more questions). While a full history of queer criminology is not included here, there is utility in highlighting the influence of other disciplines and in very briefly noting that queer criminology focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals and groups in the criminal legal system. Queer criminology includes the experiences of victims and offenders as well as the experiences of individuals working within the criminal legal system (see Buist & Lenning, 2016). Additionally, the concept of ‘queering’ criminology is important in this discussion as well. Criminology as a discipline has traditionally been focused on mainstream explanations of crime by mainstream researchers who contribute to maintaining the status quo. In general, this means there is a preponderance of research conducted by white cisgender males on white cisgender males. This isn’t to say that all of criminology is like this – there have been areas of research that expanded the knowledge base, such as critical criminology, which has long argued for the need to address issues of power, inequality, and a plethora of other intersections as related to crime. Sykes (1974) argued for the dismantling of work that would continue to support the status quo, and Ball (2016), among others, has noted the importance of activism and scholarship (see also Buist, 2020).
The book locates promises of inclusion in a longer trajectory of neoliberal capitalist accumulation, gentrification, and the emergence of an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) industrial complex which seeks to extract the productive value of differences in pursuit of profit. Bringing together findings emerging from participant observation and open-ended interviews with queer activists and anti-gentrification campaigners, as well ‘career queers’ working in some of the world’s most powerful corporations, the book tells an ethnographic story unfolding across disparate queer worlds in London, offering a situated account of how queerness is currently becoming incorporated into the dominant institutions of capitalist modernity, and what goes into enabling certain inclusive openings for some while closing down others. Using the tension between new openings promised by LGBTQ-friendly corporations and the closure of LGBTQ+ spaces in London as its driving force, the book suggests that neoliberal promises of inclusion engender forms of gentrification – both of queer activism and of queer spaces – that are ultimately at odds with a genuinely transformative vision for queer leftist politics. In so doing the book joins discussions in queer studies, organization studies, urban planning, anthropology and LGBTQ+ studies on the relationship between queerness, identity politics and capitalism. It tries to convince critics of capitalism that following these queer discussions is important and urgent, and attempts to give radical, queer and LGBTQ+ activists the tools to locate opportunities for resistance, co-optation and doing inclusion otherwise in the pursuit of alternative (queer) futures.
With those existing models put to the side I then explore how sex and gender are actually attributed (Kessler and McKenna, 1978/2006; Blackless et al, 2000; Roughgarden, 2004/2013). I try, and fail, to concretely define male-bodiedness and female-bodiedness and so instead explore how sexes and genders are assigned, both in everyday and in healthcare settings. This relates to my research where participants described the barriers they faced in navigating a cisnormative healthcare system. I then challenge the need for attributing sex and gender to others in the first place and propose a model of sex and gender where these concepts are equally socially constructed and can only be determined and articulated by the individual. This model would improve access to care for people like my research participants.
Race, class, gender and gender identity, disability status, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, migration status and faith remain salient markers of inequality in the UK, and in many ways increasingly so. Yet these inequalities have predominantly been addressed separately. Since little progress has been made by the separate single-issue approach in terms of achieving equality for the most marginalized, there is growing recognition that pursuing social justice requires policymakers and organizations to engage with intersectionality.
This chapter discusses the author’s positionality; outlines the context: UK equality policy, which has been an important driver engendering current policy and NGO sector interest in intersectionality; and describes the equality NGO sector. Then, the chapter provides an overview of the book’s core arguments, explains the research underpinning it and outlines the chapters.
In England and Wales, various legislative developments have sought to provide greater legal and social recognition for transgender people. However, in recent years, transgender people have gained increasing political, social and academic attention and have, resultantly, been subject to public scrutiny. In online spaces, this scrutiny has focused particularly on transgender people’s right to access ‘single-sex’ spaces and activities, including sport. It has been argued that trans people, and specifically trans women, have an unfair advantage when participating in sport that is segregated by gender. However, given the lack of trans representation in football, little is known about how trans people access and participate in this sport.
This chapter provides a critical analysis of trans exclusion within football in England and Wales. It is argued that football policy and culture reinforce the dominant western gender binary, resulting in the exclusion of trans people. The current professional football structure excludes nonbinary individuals and may prevent trans people from accessing and participating in football. On the other hand, grassroots football, which often has mixed-gender teams, provides opportunities for trans people to engage in football in a more inclusive way. This chapter also explores the broader social consequences for trans people that may result from exclusion in football and the symbolic power that exclusion holds.
The concept of self-determination has a lengthy scholarly history. The concept has motivated a range of bioethical concerns; as such, the interpretations and thus the effects that result from utilizing the concept vary. This book considers key personal, political and pedagogical approaches to trans, sex/gender expansive and intersex people in various policy fields such as sex/gender recognition legislation, medical diagnoses, medical interventions and educational policies. This book also contemplates how self-determination relates to sex/gender productions, transitions and expressions, and how they correspond to current debates around binary sex/gender embodiment. I will consider throughout how diverse cultural practices and systems may still be (de)limiting trans, sex/gender expansive and intersex trajectories to self-determination. These are not dead ends though but produce new virtualities. This is because trans people are always becoming-trans, sex/gender expansive people are always becoming-sex/gender expansive and intersex people are always becoming intersex-people. This is the same for cis people too, who are always becoming-cis people. The relevant qualities that everybody has are not inherent, archetypal or phylogenetic but are desired in specific assemblages of becoming-human and/or becoming-social (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004).
We will ask if (self-)determining sex/gender is an effect of desire connected to coercive effects, and what this looks like. We will explore how legal, medical and pedagogical policies have more in common with each other than we may think and ask does each of these policy areas co-produce and affect human and non-human bodies? The basic response from a new materialist perspective, which I draw on throughout, must be ‘of course’.
