Table Of ContentQueer Presences and
Absences
Edited by
Yvette Taylor and Michelle Addison
Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
Series Editors: Victoria Robinson, University of Sheffield, UK and Diane Richardson,
University of Newcastle, UK
Editorial Board: Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Australia, Kathy Davis,
Utrecht University, The Netherlands, Stevi Jackson, University of York, UK,
Michael Kimmel, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA, Kimiko Kimoto,
Hitotsubashi University, Japan, Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University, USA, Steven
Seidman, State University of New York, Albany, USA, Carol Smart, University of
Manchester, UK, Liz Stanley, University of Edinburgh, UK, Gill Valentine, University
of Leeds, UK, Jeffrey Weeks, South Bank University, UK, Kath Woodward, The Open
University, UK
Titles include:
Niall Hanlon
MASCULINITIES, CARE AND EQUALITY
Identity and Nurture in Men’s Lives
Sally Hines and Yvette Taylor (editors)
SEXUALITIES
Past Reflections, Future Directions
Meredith Nash
MAKING ‘POSTMODERN’ MOTHERS
Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image
Victoria Robinson and Jenny Hockey
MASCULINITIES IN TRANSITION
Yvette Taylor, Sally Hines and Mark E. Casey (editors)
THEORIZING INTERSECTIONALITY AND SEXUALITY
S. Hines and Y. Taylor (editors)
SEXUALITIES: PAST REFLECTIONS, FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Yvette Taylor, Michelle Addison (editors)
QUEER PRESENCES AND ABSENCES
Kath Woodward
SEX POWER AND THE GAMES
Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences
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978–0–230–27255–2 paperback
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Also by Yvette Taylor
WORKING-CLASS LESBIAN LIFE: Classed Outsiders
LESBIAN AND GAY PARENTING: Securing Social and Educational Capital
CLASSED INTERSECTIONS: Spaces, Selves, Knowledges (ed.)
THEORIZING INTERSECTIONALITY AND SEXUALITY (co-edited with Hines, S. and
Casey, M.)
SEXUALITIES: REFLECTIONS AND FUTURES (co-edited with Hines, S.)
EDUCATIONAL DIVERSITY: The Subject of Difference and Different Subjects (ed.)
FITTING INTO PLACE? Class and Gender Geographies and Temporalities
MAPPING INTIMACIES: Relations, Exchanges, Affects (co-edited with Sanger, T.)
Queer Presences and Absences
Edited by
Yvette Taylor
London South Bank University, UK
and
Michelle Addison
Newcastle University, UK
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Yvette Taylor and
Michelle Addison © 2013
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 ISBN 978-0-230-30254-9
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ISBN 978-1-349-33757-6 ISBN 978-1-137-31435-2 (eBook)
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgements xiii
Queer Presences and Absences: An Introduction 1
Yvette Taylor and Michelle Addison
Part I Queer Movements, Marginalities and Mainstreams
1 ‘Against the Dignity of Man’: Sexology Constructing
Deviance during ‘Normalisation’ in Czechoslovakia 13
Kateˇrina Lišková
2 Community at the Backstage: Gays and Lesbians in the
Czech Republic 31
Kateˇrina Nedbálková
3 Lesbian Lives and Real Existing Socialism in Late Soviet Russia 50
Francesca Stella
4 Identities and Citizenship under Construction: Historicising
the ‘T’ in LGBT Anti-Violence Politics in Brazil 69
Jan Simon Hutta and Carsten Balzer
Part II ‘Queer Mediations and (Dis)Locations’
5 Liminal Subjects, Marginal Spaces and Material Legacies:
Older Gay Men, Home and Belonging 93
Andrew Gorman-Murray
6 The Meaning of Home for Transgendered People 118
Youngsook Choi
7 Belonging: Lesbians and Gay Men’s Claims to Material Spaces 141
Mark Casey
8 ‘That’s Not Really My Scene’: Working-Class Lesbians
In (and Out of) Place 159
Yvette Taylor
9 Queering the Meaning of ‘Neighbourhood’: Reinterpreting
the Lesbian-Queer Experience of Park Slope, Brooklyn,
1983–2008 178
Jen Jack Gieseking
v
vi Contents
Part III ‘Queer Presences and Absences: Everyday
and Everywhere?’
10 Present Absences: Hidden Geographies of Lesbian Parenting 203
Karina Luzia
11 ‘Queer’ and ‘Teacher’ as Symbiosis? Exploring Absence
and Presence in Discursive Space 222
Max Biddulph
12 Organisation Studies: Not Nearly ‘Queer Enough’ 241
Nick Rumens
13 Queerying the Public Administration in Italy: Local
Challenges to a National Standstill 260
Chiara Bertone and Beatrice Gusmano
Index 279
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1 Tom’s threshold to home/closet 103
5.2 Harry’s library/sitting room 104
5.3 Doug’s dining setting 107
5.4 Harry’s terrace 108
5.5 Neil’s kitchen 109
5.6 Queer belongings 111
5.7 Cherished possessions/mnemonic anchors 112
5.8 Materialising family-of-choice and family-of-origin 113
9.1 Map of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan indicating
neighbourhoods; Grand Army Plaza is marked with an
arrow. ©OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 185
9.2 Tre ’03’s mental map of important lesbian-queer spaces
in NYC 190
9.3 Brenda ’95’s mental map of important lesbian-queer
spaces in NYC 192
Tables
5.1 Participant summary 101
10.1 The ‘how’ and ‘where’ of conception for participants
in the Women Parenting Together project 208
10.2 WPT participants attending organised mothers’ groups after
giving birth 214
vii
Notes on Contributors
Michelle Addison is an ESRC funded Ph.D. student at Newcastle University
and a Visiting Scholar at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research,
London South Bank University. Her thesis looks at workplace identity
(re)formation, (mis)recognition, and resistance, querying which identities
come to be valued and rewarded whilst giving attention to those that are
silenced and marginalised. Her research explores the classed and gendered
contours of employee’s workplace experiences as they come to be mediated,
expressed and realised through emotion. During 2007, Michelle worked as a
research assistant on the ESRC funded study: ‘From the coal to the car park?’
with Yvette Taylor (PI) (see Taylor. Y and Addison, M. (2011) ‘Placing Research:
“City Publics” and the “Public Sociologist”‘ Sociological Research Online 6(4)).
Carsten Balzer wrote hir Ph.D. thesis on transgender movements and
subcultures in Brazil, Germany, and the United States. S_he carried out
fieldwork in Tanzania and the Brazilian Amazon region, as well as in Rio
de Janeiro, New York City, and Berlin, taught courses at the Free University
Berlin, and has published a book and various chapters in anthologies and
articles in peer-reviewed journals in the U.S., Brazil, Germany, and Spain.
S_he is a member of the steering committee of the international human
rights NGO Transgender Europe (TGEU), chairperson of the Scientific
Advisory Board of the Transgender Network Berlin (TGNB) as well as a found-
ing member of the academic online magazine ‘Liminalis – Journal for Sex/
Gender Emancipation and Resistance’. Currently Carsten Balzer is the lead
researcher and project manager of TGEU’s ‘Transrespect versus Transphobia
Worldwide’ (TvT) research project, which s_he initiated in 2009.
Chiara Bertone is Assistant Professor in Sociology of the Family at the
University of East Piedmont, Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in Women’s and
Gender Studies in the Social Sciences from Aalborg University, Denmark. Her
main interests lie in sexuality and family change, explored from a gender
perspective. She has worked on a national survey on sexuality in Italy, and
coordinated a European project on the families of origin of lesbian and gay
people. Publications include the books Whose Needs? Women’s organisations
claims on child care in Italy and Denmark (2002) and Le omosessualità (2009),
and the article, written with Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto, ‘Beyond the sex
machine? Sexual practices and masculinity in adult men’s heterosexual
accounts’, Journal of Gender Studies, 2009.
Max Biddulph is a lecturer in the Centre for Research in Schools and
Communities in the School of Education, University of Nottingham,
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
UK. Prior to working in Higher Education, his experience of working
in a number of UK secondary schools provided the grounding for some
strong themes that weave through his career, namely performance, com-
munity, and empowerment. At a national level he has worked to develop
inclusive sex and relationships education curricula and most recently
his research interests have focused on dimensions of narrative and
autoethnography as mechanisms for exploring and communicating queer
experience. Max also has a strong interest in activism, LGBT and HIV
politics and in 1997 he was one of the founder members of SWAN – the
National Association of Assertiveness Trainers of Gay/Bisexual Men.
Outside of work he is proud to be a member of the gay men’s leather
community.
Mark Casey is a lecturer at Newcastle University where he teaches the
modules ‘Understanding Everyday Life’, ‘The Sociology of Tourism’ and
‘Regulating Sexuality’. He is the current degree programme director for
Politics and Sociology. His research interests cover a wide range of areas
from sexuality, gender, space and place, social class and travel, tourism
and mobilities. He is currently undertaking research funded by Newcastle
University on the island of Mallorca focused upon meanings of home and
belonging for the British expatriate community in light of the economic
downturn.
Youngsook Choi is an independent researcher and artist/curator with a par-
ticular interest in the relationship between gender and space. Her doctoral
thesis was on how the gender control of the state and its institutional prac-
tices have affected spatial occupation by gender differences, especially with
reference to transgendered people’s points of view (2011, King’s College
London). Choi had been involved in public arts and culture projects such
as the Women and Space Festival and Sexuality Museum for Youth in Seoul,
Korea. She also ran the creative workshops with young queer people about
hetero-centric dating culture enforced by commercial sectors and its influ-
ence on their everyday lives. The outcome of workshops has been published
in the arts collection Very Special Valentine’s Day (2011, Youthvoice). Choi is
currently part of the advisory group for the Seoul Community Arts Creation
Center, designing cultural programmes for immigrant women and working
class children.
Jen Jack Gieseking Ph.D., is a visiting assistant research professor at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Her research
as a cultural geographer and environmental psychologist focuses on how
everyday co-productions of space and identity support or inhibit social,
spatial, and economic justice. She is working on her first book, Queer
New York: Lesbians’ and Queer Women’s Experiences of Social and Spatial Justice
in New York City, 1983–2008. Her website is www.j gieseking.org.
