Journal of Lesbian Studies最新文献

Anti-feminist, anti-Queer politics, and Christianity have long been allies in South Korea fervently against any progressive movement involving women and sexual minorities. Since the 2010s, the societal context has shifted to include the long recession and neoliberal structural reforms after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. As a result, far-right religious groups never cease attempts to divide society based on gender, sexuality, and the Anti-Discrimination Law" To prevent "sexual orientation" from being protected under the Anti-Discrimination Act, these groups accused sexual minorities and members of advocacy groups of being pro-North Korea and pro-communist. The anti- LGBTQ groups furthered their discourse in the name of "protecting national security;" simultaneously, sexual minorities and family members of the shipwreck victims, migrant workers, and even disabled persons were treated as "non-nationals" and "pro-North Korea." Against this backdrop, Queer feminist assemblage provides creative ways to articulate the controversies, with the alliance and lived experiences of minorities.

A Fairytale for Everyone (Meseország mindenkié), a collection of 17 fairy tales, featuring LGBTQ + and gender-nonconforming characters and heroes from various disadvantaged racial/ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds was published in 2020 by the Hungarian NGO Labrisz Lesbian Association. The stories address gender relations, disability, discrimination, social justice, poverty, domestic violence, child adoption, gender transition and same-sex love. After its release, the book became the target of anti-gender attacks. It was immediately labelled as "LGBT propaganda" and demonised as a tool for "spreading gender ideology" by the far right, leading to the implementation of legislation to restrict young LGBTQ + people's rights, in the name of "protecting children". In turn, these political acts triggered unprecedented national and international support for the book and the Hungarian LGBTQ + community. Meseország became a symbol of resistance against oppression, stigmatisation, discrimination and the increasingly autocratic regime. In this activist essay, the author tells the story of this book and reflects on lesbian resistance against anti-gender ideology, coalition-building and cultural production in present-day Hungary. She discusses the impacts of ideologically based intrusions of state control and the ongoing global media attention on Labrisz, and thinks about what ways of resistance can be imagined and effective against an authoritarian post-fascist regime.

Despite the modern association of ancient Amazons and Diana's huntresses with lesbianism, scholarly accounts of these groups as they appear in ancient Greek and Roman literature have rarely adverted to any hints of homoeroticism. This article re-examines several narratives concerning Amazons and huntresses in Latin literature (including Camilla in Vergil's Aeneid and Phaedra in Seneca's eponymous tragedy) from the perspective of queer kinship and female homosociality, demonstrating the ways in which these characters subvert traditional norms of kinship and femininity, replacing patriarchal control with female sodality, often imaged as a "sister" relationship. It suggests that, even if we do not interpret these intense homosocial bonds as erotic, we can nonetheless perceive a more radical rejection of social norms that transcends genital sexuality and merits the label of "queerness", insofar as queerness can be defined as a resistance to normativity.

This article argues that the concept of "gender ideology" produces and reproduces reactionary subjectivities using different media (videos, texts, memes, images, etc.), diverse platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), and performative actions that form a decentralized propaganda machine that propagates, mobilizes, agitates, and organizes reactionary bases. Using close reading as method of inquiry, I analyze a vast archive of images, videos, and documents from the Spanish organization Hazte Oír/CitizenGo, focusing on the #FreeSpeechBus campaign in which buses with transphobic (2017) and antifeminist (2019) slogans toured different cities across Spain and around the world.

The article unfolds in four parts. In the first part, I describe gender ideology and the bus campaign as the product of a decentralized propaganda machine that produces, agitates, and organizes reactionary subjectivities through media and incarnated discourses. In the second section, I situate my perspective in relation to existing literature about gender ideology. In the third section, I will illustrate how "gender ideology" relies on the appropriation of the vocabulary and mobilization strategies traditionally associated with liberation movements as well as a fascist and right-wing repertoire of performative and media strategies. In the final part, I show the importance of fostering a transfeminist antifascism to fight "gender ideology," an approach that supports the work of activists who are fighting in the trenches, builds on efforts to decenter white cis women as the subject of feminism, supports sex workers, and reclaims media and performance as indispensable weapons in the political battle.

This article describes my recent carved wood sculptures of warrior women as a response to and reimagination of historical and mythological accounts of Amazons. I emphasize aspects of queerness and gender non-conformity in the figurative sculptures through iconographical details. This body of work is grounded in readings of classical mythology and popular culture, as well as reference to historical Amazons and women warriors in African and Indian cultures.

Despite the Philippines' progress in gender equality, contemporary evidence suggests that Filipinos continue to possess negative attitudes toward lesbian and gay individuals. Likewise, discrimination and violence toward bisexual, transgender, and queer Filipinos have been documented. Despite cases of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE) based discrimination, national-level anti-discrimination legislation remains unpassed in the Senate. This study explores the national discussions on the SOGIE Equality Bill triggered by a bathroom discrimination experienced by a Filipino transgender woman in 2019. Taking cues from Richardson's sexual citizenship framework, we investigate the diverse rights discourses among sectoral groups, such as local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other individuals of marginalized sexualities and genders (LGBTQ+) organizations and their allies, high-ranking Filipino politicians, and religious organizations. Analysis of local discourses showed that those supporting the SOGIE Equality Bill leverage identity-based rights discourses, while those opposed primarily navigate these debates using conduct-based rights discourses. Future policy and advocacy work must leverage the insights from these public proceedings to foster LGBTQ + solidarity in their campaigns for LGBTQ + rights in the country. Particularly, future work must (1) locate the middle ground between the LGBTQ + community and opposed legislators; (2) highlight essential values and common issues shared by all Filipinos; (3) surface how privilege can preclude and advance solidarity within the LGBTQ + community; (4) campaign for the passage of local anti-discrimination ordinances; (5) improve the SOGIE-related competencies of policy implementers; and (6) engage in research that explores public discourses and meanings assigned to sexual rights among Filipinos.

The clothes worn by lesbians are rich in meaning. Sometimes, they can help us to understand lesbian history and the social, personal, political, and erotic context of lesbian lives in the past. As LGBTQ communities have grown and the connections between groups within it have become at once stronger and more complicated, the clothes that lesbians (and others) wear can function as narrators. Lesbian fashion can be a tool for solidarity, our ideals worn quite literally on our sleeves. This paper is an analysis of how clothing has been - and is being - used by lesbians to show support for other groups within LGBTQ communities, through a fashion history lens. The focus is on printed t-shirts as well as clothing in different Pride flag colours, which I propose can be understood as a kind of "flagging." Flagging, here, is a way to understand the intentional choices made by lesbians and other LGBTQ + people when signalling personal identities and intra-community solidarities through dress. When solidarity activism is placed directly onto the lesbian body, it is personal, and can craft specific messages. These messages, constructed from a language of identities, visual culture, and physical garments, are what this paper seeks to examine.

For a special issue on Solidarity within the LGBTQ + community edited by Finn Mackay and Nikki Hayfield, Ella Ben Hagai, the editor of the Journal of Lesbian Studies interviewed Susan Stryker. Susan Stryker is a lesbian historian whose research, books, and films were pathbreaking in creating the field of trans* studies. I interviewed Susan to better understand the connections between queer cultures and the emergence of trans scholarship. I was also interested in her perspectives on the sort of solidarities that played a role in the trans revolution today. In the last part of the interview, I discuss with Stryker the political obstacles facing trans people and forms of solidarity necessary to face the current backlash in the U.S. against LGBTQ + people in general. In her interview, Stryker highlights the connection between BDSM subcultures, women of color feminism, and the emergence of trans* scholarship. She discusses the historical galvanization of trans and queer resistance around police violence and carceral logics, drawing lessons for overcoming current divisions in the queer community. Speaking about contemporary politics in the United States, Stryker illuminates the backlash against feminism and transgender rights and provides inspiration toward a strategy of united front politics.

This article offers a critical reflection on my creative engagement with the figure of the Amazon in the quilted artworks for my exhibition Archives and Amazons: quilting the lesbian archive which took place at HOME, Manchester in 2021. This exhibition was created in response to archival research at the only accredited museum in the UK dedicated to women, Glasgow Women's Library (GWL), which holds the remnants of the now disbanded Lesbian Archive and Information Centre (LAIC) (1984-1995). I engage specifically with two representations of Amazons, from two very disparate and politically opposed lesbian publications: firstly the illustrated cover of the LAIC newsletter, and a photographic series by the artist Tessa Boffin (1960-1993). Through auto-ethnography I articulate some of the pleasures and complexities in encountering, and re-visioning the Amazons that ride within the remaining fragments of the LAIC collection. I propose the quilt as a reparative strategy for engaging with the Amazon, one that refuses to disassemble and disassociate from the difficulties of lesbian history, re-assembling the pieces through a contemporary lesbian lens.