Post-Grad Conference: Geographies of Sexuality

2014

On-going research for my MPhil in sociology describes, documents and analyses self-identified non-heterosexual women (bisexual, lesbian, pan-sexual) from various parts of Trinidad, and how they construct an image of "Home", "Work", physical place and virtual space. This paper interrogates the cultural geographies of space and place. In particular how material cultures and social histories get grafted onto spaces to create a physical geography of place, as it relates to lesbian identity and citizenship. My ongoing aim is to illustrate the subjectivities created for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) women within certain places and spaces. Through the women's experiences, addressing the intersections of gender, identity and ethnicity with space, I examine the sexing of spaces and the pervasive nature of heteronormativity in Trinidadian society.

On-going research for my MPhil in sociology describes, documents and analyses selfidentified non-heterosexual women (bisexual, lesbian, pan-sexual) from various parts of Trinidad, and how they construct an image of "Home", "Work", physical place and virtual space. This paper interrogates the cultural geographies of space and place. In particular how material cultures and social histories get grafted onto spaces to create a physical geography of place, as it relates to lesbian identity and citizenship. My ongoing aim is to illustrate the subjectivities created for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) women within certain places and spaces. Through the women's experiences, addressing the intersections of gender, identity and ethnicity with space, I examine the sexing of spaces and the pervasive nature of heteronormativity 1 in Trinidadian society.

It has long been recognised that the spatialisation of sexual lives is always gendered. Sexism and male dominance are a pervasive reality and lesbian issues are rarely afforded the same prominence as gay issues. Thus, lesbian geographies continue to be a salient axis of difference, challenging the conflation of lesbians and gay men, as well as the trope that homonormativity affects lesbians and gay men in the same ways. This volume explores lesbian geographies in diverse geographical, social and cultural contexts and presents new approaches, using English as a working language but not as a cultural framework. Going beyond the dominant trace of Anglo-American perspectives of research in sexualities, this book presents research in a wide range of countries including Australia, Argentina, Israel, Canada, USA, Russia, Poland, Spain, Hungary and Mexico.

2011

In her new book, Transforming Gender, Sex, and Place, feminist geographer Lynda Johnston provides a multiscalar and transnational scope on trans and gender variant embodied experiences of the everyday in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australasia. Johnston begins by setting the current scene with a powerful anecdote about the everyday negotiating gender and identity in today’s world. She juxtaposes “gender reveal” parties that reify gender binaries fixed at birth, with Facebook’s proliferating gender identities, which portray an increasing number of representations of trans and gender variant people in popular culture all the while legal documents fix female and male bodies. Out of these contradictions, Johnston poses the central questions of her book: “how are place and space transformed by gender variant bodies, and vice versa? Where do some gender variant people feel in and/or out of place? What happens to place and space when binary gender is unraveled and subverted?” (p.4). The broad...

The essay addresses how Trinidadian women who transgress the bounds of normative sexuality engage in the processes of self-making, and tracks the vocabulary they use to construct this self-concept and to define their relationship to the wider society and to the state. It engages with the transformation of the word ‘queer’ from an external label of Caribbean sexual practices to a self-articulated marker for identity. This paper discusses the different uses and the relevance of the word ‘queer’, especially with its racial and class underpinnings, to refer to contemporary Caribbean homosexualities, particularly Trinidadian female homosexualities. This paper provides insight into the multi-ethnic, multi-racial and class-stratified make up of Trinidadian society all complicate individual and community identity politics.

Progress in Human Geography, 2008

Scholarship on queer geographies has called attention to the active production of space as heterosexualized and has levelled powerful critiques at the implicit heterosexual bias of much geographical theorizing. As a result, critical geographers have begun to remark upon the resistance of gays, lesbians and other sexual subjects to a dominant heterosexuality. But such a liberal framework of oppression and resistance is precisely the sort of mapping that poststructuralist queer theory emerged to write against. So, rather than charting the progress of queer geographies, this article offers a critical reading of the deployment of the notion of 'queer space' in geography and highlights an alternative queer approach that is inseparable from feminist, materialist, postcolonial and critical race theories.

In a brief period of time Portugal has experienced considerable progresses in equality legislation concerning discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Notwithstanding these significant legal changes towards equality, social discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation is a pervasive reality, lesbian and gay visibility in public spaces remain residual, and individuals still endure a great deal of distress. In this paper I investigate the multidimensional dynamics of visibilities of lesbians and gays in public spaces in Portugal, exploring same-sex public displays of affection and analysing physical and online spaces of lesbian and gay visibility. In doing so, I explore the dynamics of power associated with the implicit codes of behaviour in public spaces that discriminate homosexual visibility.

Comprehensive and authoritative, this state-of-the-art review both charts and develops the rich sub-discipline geographies of sexualities, exploring sex-gender, sexuality and sexual practices. Emerging from the desire to examine differences and exclusions as a key aspect of human geographies, these geographies have engaged with heterosexual and queer, lesbian, gay, bi and trans lives. Developing thinking in this area, geographers and other social scientists have illustrated the centrality of place, space and other spatial relationships in reconstituting sexual practices, representations, desires, as well as sexed bodies and lives. This book reviews the current state of the field and offers new insights from authors located on five continents. In doing so, the book seeks to draw on and influence core debates in this field, as well as disrupt the Anglo-American hegemony in studies of sexualities, sexes and geographies. This volume is the definitive collection in the area, bringing tog...

Kath Browne is an important geographerin the new generation of researchers in thegeographies of sexualities’ field in theAnglophones countries. Kath Browne’spromising work addresses several issuesrelating geography, sexualities and gender.Covering a number of themes pertaining tolesbian women, trans population or researchon sexism and discrimination against theLGBT population.The interview explores the work ofcooperation and integration of geographies ofsexualities in the Royal Geographical Societyand the cooperative work in which shebecame involved during the organization oftheFirstEuropeanConferenceonGeographies of Sexualities in 2011, as well asthe interaction between research and activism.

his article addresses methodological issues emerging from research conducted with Trans in the Center, an LGBT activist group in Tel Aviv, Israel. It addresses some complex issues related to the politics and ethics of applying queer and feminist methodology to qualitative research in a trans, queer and feminist community space. The focus is on two issues: the researcher’s positionality vis-à-vis the participants and selecting the appropriate methodology in relation to the characteristics of the group under study. Such issues demonstrate how queer and feminist principles are articulated and interwoven in geographical-spatial research in two different dimensions: in the research practice and methodology and in the practices and the spaces created by the activity of the researched group itself. I conclude with insights arising from the attempt to apply feminist and queer paradigms in both theory and research, and call for their integration into geographical research.