Gender, Place and Power

Gender, Place and Power

Editel!fby

~TH BROWNE.t\ND EDUARDA FERREIRA

© 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 ofthe publisher.

Contents

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 Wey Court East Union Road Farnham Surrey, GU9 7PT England

Ashgate Publishing Company 110 Cherry Street Suite 3-1 Burlington, VT05401-3818 USA

www.ashgate.com

List 01Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors

vii

ix xv

A cknowledgements

Introduction to Lesbian Geographies Kath Browne and Eduarda Ferreira 2

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Seduced Victims and Irresponsible Mothers: Family Reactions to Female Same-Sex Relationships in Hungary Rita Beres-Deäk

29

Lesbians at Horne: Gender and Housework in Lesbian Coupled Households Carla Barrett

55

Contested Dyke Rights to the City: Montreal's 2012 Dyke Marches in Time and Space Julie Podmore

71

The Gendered Politics of Absence: Homonationalism Gendered Power Relations in Tel Aviv's Gay-Center Gilly Hartal

91

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

3 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as foliows: 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

4

aspects. 4. Cultural geography.

5

I. Ferreira, Eduarda. H. Title.

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ISBN 9781472443960 ISBN 9781472443977

(ebk-PDF) (ebk - ePUB)

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'It's a way for me to feel safe in places that might not really be gay-friendly': Music as Safe Lesbian Space Lisa Hardie and Lynda Johnston

113

What Makes a Lesbian Salsa Space Comfortable? Reconceptualising Safety and Homophobia Stefanie Claudine Boulila

133

He poxepsr, He naHKH,MbI .n:eBqOHKH - nec6IDIHKH/Not Rockers, Not Punks, We're Lesbian Chicks: Staging Female Same Sex Desires in Russian Rock and Pop Katharina Wiedlack and Masha Neufeld MbI

153

TA!somn-creograpmes

The Queer Film Festival as a Gender-Diverse the 'L' in GLBTIQ Screen Content Akkadia Ford

Space: Positioning

10

Location, Location: Lesbian Performativities Marta O/asik

That Matter, or Not

11

All the Lesbians are White, All the Villages are Gay, but Some ofUs are Brave: Intersectionality, Belonging, and Black Queer Women's Scene Space in Washington DC Nikki Lane

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13

Index

177

Putting Lesbians Geographies on the Geographical Map A Commentary Marianne Blidon Lesbian Geographies - A Commentary Catherine J. Nash

201

I I

219

'I

243

List of Figures and Tables

Figures 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3

Radical Dyke March Route, 2012 The Radical Dyke March in Montreal's Gay Village The LGBT Women's March 'It's Worth Being Gay' 'Is it Worth Being Gay?' 'The Whole Country is Covered in Flags'

79 81 85 100 101 103

Participants Participants'

117 118

249

I 261

I

Tables 6.1 6.2

Song Choices

Chapter 7

What Makes a Lesbian Salsa Space Comfortable? Reconceptualising Safety and Homophobia Stefanie Claudine Boulila 11

Introduction (I)f 1 had wanted to lead a woman [ ... ] 1think it would have just been seen as a way to get male attention because they wouldn't have been able to comprehend that 1 would want to lead a woman ... It was very closed in that way. (Emily, folIower and leader)

Judith Butler (1993) contended that 'the lesbian' is a contested signifier for identification. To her, being a lesbian can mean various things, impossible to be delimited to a set of experiences or practices. However, in making an attempt at adefinition she argues that being a lesbian most probably means that 'we' know of the specific workings of homophobia against women. With a focus on the intersectional dimensions of power that are at work when lesbian subjectivities are enabledldisabled, this chapter explores the sexual spatialisation of salsa dan ce spaces through the narratives oflesbian salsa dancers. With critical dan ce scholars (Bosse, 2007; McMains, 2009, 2013) pointing to the naturalising role salsa dance plays in the production of gendered, sexualised and racialised bodies, I will explore how salsa dance classes and club nights act as disciplinary sites which are product and productive of the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990). Various critics have noted that salsa works as a discursive re alm for producing and negotiating cultural and racial difference through notions of gender and sexuality (Bosse, 2007; Borland, 2009; McMains, 2009, 2013; Bock and Borland, 2011; Schneider, 2013). Dance theorist Juliet McMains (2013) contends that representations of Latinidad in the salsa dance economy revolve around passion, lack of sexual and emotional control but also social conservatism which ties in with notions of hypennasculine machismo and heteropatriarchy. This imagined excess stands in opposition to European tropes ofreason and restraint and they are part of a genealogy which Anne McClintock (1995, p.22) famously called 'pornotropics'. Various anti-raeist dance theorists have argued that the introduction of salsa into the curricula of Western dance institutions has led to a fixation on (heterosexual) partnerings (Renta, 2004; Borland, 2009; McMains, 2009). The

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gender and sexual stereotypes at work in salsa settings should therefore be placed within a genealogy ofEuropean dance conventions and exoticising scripts. Salsa music and dance have become a giobally popular phenomenon. Coined in the 1970s in New York as a hybrid LatinaJo music genre, salsa is now being celebrated across the world. Theorising salsa means recognising it as a hybrid music and dance phenomenon, as it draws trajectories from the marginalised Hispanic and Black minorities in New York, to the formerly colonised Caribbean, Latin Americas, back to the US and from there all over the world (Febres, 1997; Aparicio, 1998; Waxer, 2002; Ospina, 2002). As a commodity on a global market, salsa has become an emblem for pan-Latinidad that is often epitomised by exoticised gender representations (Davila, 2001; Renta, 2004) This chapter draws on conversations with seven salseras based in two English metropolitan areas who identify as lesbian and bi sexual. They largely dance in same-sex or LGBT studio settings. I wiIJ offer lesbian subjectivities as a way of acknowledging the diversity of experiences that can inform the signifier 'Iesbian'. I aim to argue against sexuality as a single-issue discourse by presenting 'the lesbian' as a discursive position that is informed by various power dimensions (not alI of wh ich I can explore in the scope of this chapter). I wiJI highlight that the experiences of lesbian salseras in heteronormative salsa spaces cannot be captured within dominant homophobia paradigms. The focus hereby will Iie on a critique of homophobia as it fails to account for experiences that are marked by sexism as much as they are marked by heterosexism and heteronormativity. I will examine narratives of discomfort in order to validate lesbian experiences of marginalisation. Moreover, I will theorise comfort as a spatial technology that allows subjects to inhabit and create space.

Heteronormativity

and (Un-)Comfortable

Dance Spaces

Critical work from various disciplines has drawn attention to the heterosexualising processes that constitute everyday spaces (Valentine, 1993; Kawale, 2004; Ahmed, 2006; Browne, 2007; Feministisches Kollektiv, 2008; Held and Leach, 2008; Caudwell and Browne, 2011; Ferreira, 2011). These interventions explore how power is mediated through performative acts that manifest themselves in heterosexual hegemony (Valentine, 1993) the spatiality of sexuality (Caudwell and Browne 2011) Machtverhältnisse (power relations) (Feministisches Kollektiv, 2008), models of orientation (Ahmed, 2006) and supremacy (Kawale, 2004). Hegemonies shape spaces as they alIow for some bodies and practices to go unnoticed whilst others stand out as deviant. They define how subjects emerge and take up space. Power processes therefore not only shape how subjects can move, they also affect their ability to act and become. Leisure spaces are equally productive of social difference on the lines of gender, sexuality, 'race' and class (Skeggs, 1999; Kawale, 2003; Taylor, 2007; Held and Leach, 2008; Caudwell and Browne, 2011). The power dimensions that inform such

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spaces often naturalise hierarchies and marginalisation. Kath Browne (2007) has explored how heterosexuality is reproduced through subtle and mundane practices. Drawing on Judith Butler (1990), Browne theorises the notion of 'common-sense' as a performative script with an ontologising effect as it becomes an invisible point of reference for spatialising performative acts. Understanding common-sense as 'relations, actions, and activities that are assumed to be "obvious", "normal", and at times "natural''' (2007, p.997) she highlights their invisibility but yet allencompassing scope. For Browne, this array of visible (wh at is knowable as homophobia) and invisible (materialisations ofheterosexism and heteronormativity) processes is what drives the re-production of (spatial) social relations. Following Sara Ahmed (2006) power is at the centre of spatial negotiations as it marks some bodies and practices as at home and some as out of place. Horne can be understood as a location that enables the convergence of identity and selfperformances (Holliday, 1999), or in col1oquiallanguage 'a place where one can be oneself'. If heteronormativity provides ahorne for heterosexuality, it administers comfort to those bodies who engage in its enactment but presents alienation for those who do not. Narratives of horne are closely intertwined with conceptualisations of comfort as various theorists have explored (Holliday, 1999; Moran and Skeggs, 2004; Ahmed, 2006). To SaraAhmed (2006, p.147) 'The word "comfort" suggests wellbeing and satisfaction, but it also suggests an ease and easiness'. Comfort can therefore be understood as a framework for agency. One's ability to act is at the centre of Elizabeth Grosz's (2010) conceptualisation of freedom. In an attempt to reconceptualise feminist subjectivity and agency, Grosz has proposed to shift the focus from 'a removal of oppression' towards enabling action. This shift from 'being' to 'doing' poses the question ofwhat circumstances enable subjects the ability to act. FollowingAhmed (2006), those who are 'at horne' with their identifications and practices can act with ease. Comfort can therefore be a way of evaluating scopes of action and with that, freedom. Ifheterosexuality signifies discomfort to queer subjects, it is a stipulation that has to be taken into account when evaluating its manifestation in spaces. Leslie Moran and Beverley Skeggs (2004) also highlight that narratives of comfort are discursively linked to notions of safety. They have argued that comfort alIows verbalising the affective dimensions of safety, something particularly pertinent to subjects who are marked as Other by power formations. Although safety manifests in many discursive ways and can mean multiple things to various subjects, it always has an affective dimension: 'The loss of safety and insecurity - the threat of, the drama, the anxiety, the possibility - shapes the whole public imaginary of violence' (Moran and Skeggs, 2004, p.l). This potential of 'threat' and the vulnerability of subjectivity and embodiment (Butler, 2004) connect safety to violence. However, the affective dimension of safety articulated through narratives of comfort and by those who are affected by heterosexism and heteronormativity often remain in what is understood as the realm of the private and personal, a discursive space that is opposed to what is understood as public and political (Moran and Skeggs, 2004; Browne, 2007).

ii

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t-provoking book. Not only for the complexity and diversity of the lesbian spatial reality resented in its pages, but above all by the challenge to the way we have produced the geographies of sexualities. Besides enriching and broadening intellectual horizons, this hock 'Offm a way to build less arrogant and more hopeful scientific paths. Lesbian Geographie

Joseli Mafia Sllva, State University of Ponta Grossa, Brazil sbian Geographies, a wide-ranging and insightjul collection, I answer to this questiott retpJiresnot adding lesbians to geography

. on lesbitm ~in .

,lesbian lives are ~by tion. SaraAhm

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