In 21st- century Ireland, Canada and the Great Britain, significant changes to sexual and gender legislation, abortion access and associated social and cultural life include the legalisation of same- sex marriage, employment rights, access to abortion and self- identification/gender recognition. This paper draws on interviews from the Beyond Opposition research to explore the experiences of those who are concerned about and/or actively oppose these socio- legal changes. We consider participants understandings of themselves as losing power within social relations and the ways in which their positionings can be seen as excluded or marginalised in public spaces. Examining their experiences  of  public  space  offers  insights  into  experiences  of  new  power  relations,  including  state  sanctions,  that  contest  binaries  of  marginalisation/privilege.  These  positions  between  marginalisation/privilege,  illustrate  the  effectiveness  and  limitations  of  framing  these  views  as  ‘unacceptable’ in public arenas. Operating between marginal/privileged requires a reworking of these 20th Century paradigms for 21st Century social divisions.

Key words: Sexuality; queer; anti- gender; heteroactivism; marginalisation; privilege

Luger, J. (2023) Shifting Positionings and Queer Time at the Precipice of Apocalypse Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 114(4): 289-293

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Abstract

This  commentary  on  Kath  Browne  and  Catherine  Nash’s  paper  ‘From  hegemonic  to  where?’, considers  the  ‘between-  ness’  and  precarious  ephemerality  of  queer  life  at  the  precipice  of  apocalypse. Substantively, the commentary critically addresses three of Browne and Nash’s key themes, which they develop according to a queer ontology. These are: (a) temporality, and the notions of nonlinearity and reversibility; (b) the unsteadiness and precarity of ‘between- ness’ and the radical openness it allows; and finally, (c) the complex and dynamic, sometimes contradictory, understandings   and   positionalities   of   [hetero]activism   and   resistances.   This   commentary   lauds  Browne  and  Nash’s  significant  contribution  to  greater  understandings  of  these  socio-  cultural complexities. The paper demonstrates poignantly how a queer framework can broaden understanding of hegemony and marginality; power, spatiality and gender; and the negotiation of intersectional identities. The commentary also offers a few provocations about just how much room the blurry ‘in- between’ can be given at this critical socio- political moment.

Hall, SM (2023) Personal, Political and Public: Socio-Legal Changes from a Relational Perspective Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 114(4): 294-297

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Abstract

The paper offers a response to Kath Browne and Catherine Nash's paper ‘From hegemonic to where?’. Building on their influential body of work and expanding upon further empirical research across Ireland, Canada and the UK, their paper is a direct examination of the views and experiences of those concerned about socio-legal challenges in sexuality and gender. With my responses and provocations, I gesture towards a relational geographical framing, focusing on three main themes: the everyday and relationality, experience and difference, and praxis and allyship.

This  response  discusses  the  commentaries  provided  by  Sarah  Hall  and  Jason  Luger.  It  outlines  future work regrading diversity amongst Beyond Opposition participants; the dangers of doing this  work;  the  multiplicities  and  shifting  power  relations  that  the  paper  reveals  and  what  these  might imply more broadly. We note that 'the struggle continues' and considerations of defence/attack are one way of engaging this, there may be others.

Key words: Opposition; polarisation; sexuality; gender; queer

COVID19 is inherently geographical in its impact on society. Not only has it deepened pre-existing inequalities and further isolated groups that rely on physical spaces, such as LGBTQ people, the pandemic required a restructuring of multiple forms of time–space relations including activism. Using interview and questionnaires responses from early 2021, we explore the impact of COVID19 on the activities of those expressing concerns about, and opposition to, socio-legal changes related to sexualities and genders in Canada, Great Britian and Ireland. Participants’ perceptions of the effects of COVID19 regimes (lockdowns and restrictions) highlight four key trends. First, the biggest group of questionnaire respondents understood their views/activities as unchanging. Second, some participants noted a disengagement with sexual and gender politics. Third, those who were activists before/during COVID19 noted challenges in continuing their activities online with the loss of face-to-face interactions, and how they negotiated new spatialities. Finally, for some participants COVID19 regimes meant either newly engaging in, or increasing their pre-pandemic, activism with time to ‘research’ and to develop their activities. Further work is needed to investigate if our findings are similar to other groups engaged in other forms of activism and the longitudinal effects and implications of COVID19 geographies on activism.

Keywords: Sexuality; heteroactivism; anti-gender; feminism; queer

Abstract: This article considers the multiple relations that emerge from and between Facebook commenters, as well as between commenters, researchers, and the research project during recruitment. To do so, we draw on our experiences of recruiting individuals who have concerns about or are opposed to a range of recent social and legal changes in ‘post-equality’ contexts. Understanding research as co-created rather than ‘collecting data from’ participants, we consider the researcher, commenters, and Facebook technologies as active agents, and ask how the emergent relationalities between these agents shapes the social media recruitment process. We develop thinking regarding these relationalities through an in-depth exploration of our processes that reveal key methodological considerations relevant to social media recruitment in the social sciences. As the process of recruitment is mutually constructed online through multiple relationalities across researcher/project and commenter, as well as between commenters themselves, we conclude that there is a need for dynamic, iterative, and reflexive responses and engagements rather than pre-defined frameworks.

Keywords: Social media research methods; online research methods; sexuality; gender; LGBTI; heteroactivism; anti-gender

As part of the ERC funding we are asked to let them know what we have done midway through the project by submitting an interim academic report. The report details what the project achieved by the midpoint, and what is left to do. 

View report here.

This summary offers some early insights into what we are finding and provides a general overview of how we are using participant data.

View summary