Homonormativity or queer disidentification? Rural Australian bisexual women's identity politics

Abstract

Recent research shows that queer youth increasingly reject traditional sexual labels in favour of more fluid identifications. Despite well-rehearsed debates around queer identity politics under neoliberalism, there is a dearth of research examining how queerness is understood and expressed in rural Australia. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines bisexual and queer young women's understandings of sexual labels in Tasmania, Australia. Drawing on Jose Esteban Muñoz's disidentifications, we argue that while neoliberalism and homonormativity do influence rural queer women's identity politics, their lived experiences present specific challenges that draw attention to the urban-centricity of homonormativity.

Hermeneutical Injustice and Bisexuality: Toward New Conceptual Tools

“…9 Such ambivalence is perhaps captured by Muñoz's concept of disidentification, a third strategy for dealing with the dominant ideology that differs from both identification (assimilation) and counteridentification (the utopian rebellion against a symbolic system) (Muñoz 1999: 11). See also Medina (2003) and Grant and Nash (2020). 10 Fricker (2007, ch.…”

“…turns into a hypothesis, then a belief, and then a taken-for-granted hinge. 23 Grant and Nash (2020) argue that this is also a consequence of a broadly neoliberal ideology that emphasized the individual over the collective. 24 This way of interpreting the dialectic between rule and practice is inspired by Naomi Scheman's "shifting ground" perspective; cf.…”

A future without homophobia? Gay men and personal responsibility in the Chilean telenovela Casa de Muñecos

“…Post-closet gays, in this sense, generally conform with the politics of homonormativity (Duggan, 2002) , as they are not contesting heteronormative assumptions but reproducing them through the strengthening of a depoliticised gay culture that is rooted in normative domesticity. These are characters who speak to and reproduce a neoliberal rhetoric that turns sexuality into a mostly individual matter whose negotiation is purely the subject’s responsibility, as they are located in a context in which broader social movements are not necessary because homophobia does not seem to be ‘a big problem’ anymore (Grant and Nash, 2020; Richardson, 2005; Seidman and Meeks, 2011).…”

Lived difference

“…Normalisation can also be read through theories of stratification. The stratified distribution of resources and access to discourses are, Skeggs (2004: 53) argues, central to the construction of 'normal' biographies (see also Grant and Nash, 2019).…”