The ‘uncanny doubles’ of queer politics: Sexual citizenship in the era of same-sex marriage victories

Dreher, Tanja

doi:10.1177/1363460716645788

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Indeed, the Australian flag itself has become one manifestation of discomfort surrounding the issue (Daley, 2018). As mentioned earlier, Dreher (2017) has shown how this discourse in the Australian SSM campaign can be connected to Islamophobia (Nadim, 2017). Emily Castle (2017) further notes how the marriage equality campaign had long established a pattern of suggesting that SSM would strengthen and cohere the nation.…”

Section: The Cruel Optimism Of Post-liberation Discoursementioning

confidence: 94%

‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’: Post-liberation politics in Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey

2019

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In December 2017, Australia legalized same-sex marriage (SSM), following a 13-year ban and a drawn-out postal survey on marriage equality that saw campaigners mobilize for a ‘Yes’ vote on a non-binding poll. Through a discourse analysis of the Yes and No campaigns’ television and online video advertisements, we demonstrate how the Yes campaign was symptomatic of what we call a ‘post-liberation’ approach that saw SSM as the last major hurdle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) politics. While the No campaign linked SSM to gender fluidity, transgender identity, and sex education programmes, in contrast the Yes campaign limited itself to narratives around love and marriage. In not attending to the link between sex, gender and sexuality, the Yes campaign narrowed the possibilities of the debate, preserving existing White heteronormative expectations of gender and sexuality. We contrast the debate that unfolded during the postal survey to the Australian Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s, the latter of which was able to successfully and radically challenge similarly homophobic campaigns. Rather than relying on ‘palatable’ or mainstream ideas of equality, love and fairness, Gay Liberation in Australia embraced the radical potential of LGBTIQ activism and presented a utopian, optimistic vision of a transformed future. Here we suggest that we can learn from the history of campaigns around sexuality, to understand what was ‘won’ in the SSM debate, and to better develop strategies for change in the future.

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Section: The Cruel Optimism Of Post-liberation Discoursementioning

confidence: 94%

‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’: Post-liberation politics in Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey

2019

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“…Our rationale for comparing the experiences of LGBTQ+ Australians born in the 1970s (and coming of age in the 1990s) with those born in the 1990s (and coming of age in the 2010s), derives from the fact that during the 1990s in Australia, there was a rapid expansion in the availability of different (hitherto lacking) support provision for LGBTQ+ youth and those who worked with them, including community and peer‐led support groups, resources, and publications (Cover, ; Marshall, ; Rasmussen, ). Since that time, a number of key historical changes have led to a relative mainstreaming of LGBTQ+ concerns, particularly the development of and widespread access to the Internet, but also the move toward support services becoming more formalized, professionalized, and individualized (Hillier et al, ; Rasmussen, ) and advocacy becoming more focused on the legal and policy dimensions of LGBTQ+ rights (Dreher, ). This means that for many young people growing up today, the relationship between gender and sexual identity and the process of transition to adulthood may be experienced quite differently than it was in previous generations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiences of Family Belonging among Two Generations of Sexually Diverse Australians

et al. 2019

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Objective To extend knowledge about how lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans+, and queer (LGBTQ+) people relate to their families of origin by paying particular attention to their experiences of belonging within this context. Background Although the impact of family rejection on young LGBTQ+ people is well established, circumstances and expressions of family belonging are less well understood. Method Taking a qualitative, social generational approach, we asked two groups of Australians, born in the 1970s (n = 14) and 1990s (n = 18), about their experiences of family relationships when they were growing up sexually and/or gender diverse. Results A subset of participants described feeling accepted by families of origin, although very few were gender diverse. The 1970s cohort described these experiences as culturally exceptional, and the 1990s cohort as a birthright. Examples from both demonstrate how family belonging can remain conditional. Conclusion Experiences of family belonging reveal both the importance of family to the well‐being and flourishing of LGBTQ+ people, and the entanglement between individual and social understandings of what family acceptance comprises. Implications Scholars and support service providers may benefit from recognizing that some sexual minorities experience belonging in their families of origin, but work remains in understanding and challenging the conditions that some families continue to impose.

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“…Alongside the neoliberal homonormative city, conceptualisations of homonationalism have focused attention on inter-scalar geopolitical violence shaping urban LGBTQI+ activisms (Hartal and Sasson-Levy, 2018;Hubbard and Wilkinson, 2015). Much of this work speaks directly to ongoing problems and possibilities in queer activisms in Sydney, where, for example, Dreher (2017) has drawn on work on homonationalism to show how the push for marriage equality in Australia can play into a discourse in which Australia is imagined as being 'on the right side of history' and set against others in racialising ways. Importantly, however, such homonationalist and homonormative formations have co-existed in complex ways with queer activism centred around the violence faced by queer refugees (Baird, 2018), queer Asian activism emerging from the intersection of diasporic cultural production and ethno-specific HIV/AIDS public health work (Yue, 2008) and 'multicultural queer' projects, from which a range of minoritised queer groups have, separately or together, articulated political claims (Low and Pallotta-Chiarolli, 2015;Ruez, 2016).…”

Section: Worlding Lgbtqi+ Activisms and Urbanisms Otherwisementioning

confidence: 99%

‘We’re in Asia’: Worlding LGBTQI+ activism otherwise in Sydney

Ruez

2020

Urban Studies

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Building on recent work in postcolonial urban studies that has developed more genuinely plural approaches to urban theorising, this article poses the problem of ‘worlding’ in relation to urban LGBTQI+ activism in Sydney, Australia. Specifically, the article examines how Sydney is variously worlded as or against ‘Asia’ in public debate around LGBTQI+ politics and in the imaginaries of activists living in Sydney. These worldings are shown to be an important aspect of queer activisms and urbanisms in Sydney, and I argue that attention to this worlding can productively complement a renewed focus on place and specificity in queer urban literatures. While imagining Sydney or Australia as part of Asia is itself no guarantee of productive politics or of decentring epistemologies, the article argues that some of these worldings do provide an occasion and a provocation to think elsewhere and otherwise in ways that are responsive to the specific character of White Australia’s colonial pasts and presents, while also generatively (dis)locating Sydney beyond the ‘West’.

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The ‘uncanny doubles’ of queer politics: Sexual citizenship in the era of same-sex marriage victories

Cited by 17 publications

References 24 publications

‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’: Post-liberation politics in Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey

‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’: Post-liberation politics in Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey

Experiences of Family Belonging among Two Generations of Sexually Diverse Australians

‘We’re in Asia’: Worlding LGBTQI+ activism otherwise in Sydney

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