Lesbian Geographies : Gender, Place and Power / by Kath Browne and Eduarda Ferreira
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LESBIAN GEOGRAPHIES For those who think that issues such as the lack of lesbian and queer socialising spaces are neither important nor deserve much theoretical and empirical analysis from the Social Sciences, this book is a must read. Departing from the intersections between queer and feminist geographies, and calling into question the Anglo-American hegemonies in these debates, it includes a complex analysis of resistant spaces and places, economic and social differences, power relations and communities, among many other important topics. Bravo! Gracia Trujillo, University of Castille – La Mancha, Spain For those who have gone before and those yet to come Lesbian Geographies Gender, Place and Power Edited by KATH BROWNE University of Brighton, UK EDUARDA FERREIRA Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal © Kath Browne, Eduarda Ferreira and the contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Kath Browne and Eduarda Ferreira have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7PT USA England www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Browne, Kath. Lesbian geographies : gender, place and power / by Kath Browne and Eduarda Ferreira. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-4395-3 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4724-4396-0 (ebook) – ISBN 978-1-4724-4397-7 (epub) 1. Lesbians. 2. Gays—Identity. 3. Space—Social aspects. 4. Cultural geography. I. Ferreira, Eduarda. II. Title. HQ75.5.B765 2015 306.76’63–dc23 2015014509 ISBN 9781472443953 (hbk) ISBN 9781472443960 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781472443977 (ebk – ePUB) Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgements xv 1 Introduction to Lesbian Geographies 1 Kath Browne and Eduarda Ferreira 2 Seduced Victims and Irresponsible Mothers: Family Reactions to Female Same-Sex Relationships in Hungary 29 Rita Béres-Deák 3 Lesbians at Home: Gender and Housework in Lesbian Coupled Households 55 Carla Barrett 4 Contested Dyke Rights to the City: Montréal’s 2012 Dyke Marches in Time and Space 71 Julie Podmore 5 The Gendered Politics of Absence: Homonationalism and Gendered Power Relations in Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center 91 Gilly Hartal 6 ‘It’s a way for me to feel safe in places that might not really be gay-friendly’: Music as Safe Lesbian Space 113 Lisa Hardie and Lynda Johnston 7 What Makes a Lesbian Salsa Space Comfortable? Reconceptualising Safety and Homophobia 133 Stefanie Claudine Boulila 8 Мы не рокеры, не панки, мы девчонки – лесбиянки/Not Rockers, Not Punks, We’re Lesbian Chicks: Staging Female Same Sex Desires in Russian Rock and Pop 153 Katharina Wiedlack and Masha Neufeld vi Lesbian Geographies 9 The Queer Film Festival as a Gender-Diverse Space: Positioning the ‘L’ in GLBTIQ Screen Content 177 Akkadia Ford 10 Location, Location: Lesbian Performativities That Matter, or Not 201 Marta Olasik 11 All the Lesbians are White, All the Villages are Gay, but Some of Us are Brave: Intersectionality, Belonging, and Black Queer Women’s Scene Space in Washington DC 219 Nikki Lane 12 Putting Lesbians Geographies on the Geographical Map – A Commentary 243 Marianne Blidon 13 Lesbian Geographies – A Commentary 249 Catherine J. Nash Index 261 List of Figures and Tables Figures 4.1 Radical Dyke March Route, 2012 79 4.2 The Radical Dyke March in Montréal’s Gay Village 81 4.3 The LGBT Women’s March 85 5.1 ‘It’s Worth Being Gay’ 100 5.2 ‘Is it Worth Being Gay?’ 101 5.3 ‘The Whole Country is Covered in Flags’ 103 Tables 6.1 Participants 117 6.2 Participants’ Song Choices 118 This page has been left blank intentionally Notes on Contributors Carla Barrett is a PhD researcher in Geography at the University of Southampton, UK. Her research looks at the division of domestic labour and childcare in LGBTQ coupled homes in England, which she is investigating through the use of qualitative interviewing. She also works as a Research Officer at the University of Brighton on the Liveable Lives project, which is exploring what makes life liveable for LGBTQ people in the UK and India. Prior to beginning her PhD, Carla completed her BA in Geography at the University of Southampton. She has worked as a Teaching Assistant on undergraduate courses in Human Geography, which has included delivering lectures and seminars as well as teaching on two field courses in Amsterdam. She is an active member of the University of Southampton’s LGBT Research Community, administering and contributing to their website. More broadly, Carla’s research interests include geographies of sexuality and gender, geographies of home, children’s geographies and queer geographies. Rita Béres-Deák is a cultural anthropologist and LGBTQ activist in Hungary. She received her BA in Cultural Anthropology at ELTE Budapest University in 2001 and her MA in Gender Studies at the Central European University in 2002. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Central European University in Budapest, where her dissertation topic is the relationship between same-sex couples and their family of origin. Her main research interest is LGBT communities, but she has also done research on gender representations and people with disabilities. She is involved in national and international LGBTQ activism. Marianne Blidon is associate professor at Paris 1-Pantheon Sorbonne University and associate researcher at INED (National institute of Demographic Studies). She’s a feminist geographer, working on gender and sexualities. She founded and led with Violaine Sebillotte a Certificate in gender studies at Sorbonne University. She is the first French geographer to achieve a PhD on the geography of sexualities (‘Distance and meeting. Elements for a queer geography’). She has organised several seminars and symposia on gender and queer geographies helping to legitimise these topics in France. She founded with other social researchers a free open access journal Genre, sexualité & société that she led during 8 years. She is an editorial board member of the journal Gender, Place and Culture. She has published several special editions of journals such as L’Espace Politique and Echogéo. x Lesbian Geographies Stefanie Claudine Boulila is an AHRC-funded PhD candidate at the School for Performance and Cultural Industries and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds. In her PhD thesis, Stefanie explores salsa dance spaces in Europe as sites of racialisation and heterosexualisation. She currently works on post-homophobic imaginaries in Europe. Stefanie’s previous publications have explored the lesbian dancing body and anti-Muslim feminism in Switzerland. Stefanie holds an MA in Global Genders from the University of Leeds. She is an associate member of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University Berlin where she teaches feminist, queer and postcolonial theory. Kath Browne is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Brighton. Her research interests coalesce around geographies of gender and sexualities and encompass the areas of sexualities, gender, feminisms, queer, festivals and everyday lives. Using participatory research, she works with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans communities including through the Count Me In Too research, from which she co-wrote Queer in Brighton?: LGBT, Activisms and The City with activist researcher Leela Bakshi. She has written over 90 publications across a range of disciplines, using diverse formats and edited nine special editions of journals. She co-wrote also co-authored Queer Spiritual Spaces and has co-edited Queer Methods and Methodologies and Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics. Eduarda Ferreira is a researcher at the CICS.NOVA – Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences and a lecturer of the Curricular Unit ‘Geography, Gender and Sexuality’ at FCSH/NOVA. She has published and presented on gender, sexualities, lesbian studies, equality policies and participatory geospatial web. She has participated in diverse conference organising committees, such as: ‘European Geographies of Sexualities Conference’ (Brussels 2011 and Lisbon 2013) and ‘Geographies of Inclusion: Challenges and opportunities’ (Lisbon 2010). She was an executive board member of ‘Associação Clube Safo’ a Portuguese organisation of lesbian rights (2002–2008), a member of the Portuguese National Implementing Body of the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All (2007), and she is a founding editorial member of LES Online – Digital Journal on Lesbian Issues (2008-onward) with an active involvement in LGBT rights movements. Akkadia Ford is a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies, School of Arts & Social Sciences, at Southern Cross University, Australia and is a trained filmmaker, establishing and working as Festival Director of Queer Fruits Film Festival (2009–2012). Current areas of interest are focused upon transgender representation in films, transliteracy, queer film, film classification (ratings systems) in Australia and USA, gender disruption, film festivals, audiences and issues of spectatorship. Recent publications have focussed upon transliteracy as a theoretical approach to reading gender–diverse cinema of the Trans New Wave. Notes on Contributors xi Lisa Hardie is currently a PhD candidate in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Brighton, UK. She is particularly interested in imagined geographies, performativity, embodiment, queer geographies, and feminist research methods. Her dissertation examines the embodied and imagined geographies of New Zealand tourists when they visit the commemorative WWI sites in Gallipoli, Turkey.