Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon a literature review of queer leadership and preliminary qualitative research findings on the expectations and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer leaders in the UK, this paper seeks to explore how sexuality features in leadership and notions of transformational leadership.

Paper long abstract:

What expectations are placed on individuals that hold certain marginalized identities to think beyond and challenge existing realities? This qualitative investigation explores the leadership experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LBGQ) people in the UK (inclusive of trans and non-binary folks who identify as LGBQ). Queering leadership may be understood as both an intellectual and embodied project; it may be both contemplated and enacted in everyday practice. While this work focuses on sexuality, other social identities such as gender identity, race/ethnicity, and class all play into leadership experiences. Interrogating how different identities and experiences manifest in leadership can reveal expectations and norms that LGBQ people come up against. Previous research with LGBQ people in leadership revealed how participants felt a need to be “the right kind of queer” (Lee 2020); they felt pressure to exist in a way that would lead to acceptance. While having LGBQ people in leadership positions may challenge heteronormativity, we need to consider how this may be replaced by homonormativity and the degree to which people are able to express their identities and experiences in the workplace and in leadership positions. It is important to consider how LGBQ people in leadership are expected to bring about transformation. Do lived experiences of being LGBQ equip these individuals with a certain consciousness that will bring about change? How do we expect individuals to become transformational leaders? Drawing on both literature and preliminary research findings, this paper will explore both expectations and experiences of LGBQ leaders.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork research conducted in Wroclaw, in this paper I analyze how the EU-related idea of sexual citizenship has been adapted (and contested) by LGBT/Q grassroots activists to initiate various forms of formal and informal collaboration and to fight for the LGBT rights on a local level.

Paper long abstract:

Since the early 21st century the idea of European sexual citizenship that envisions non-heteronormative persons as model (neo)liberal citizens, perfectly integrated into each member state of the EU due to its "Pink Agenda," has been widely criticized as symbolically violent (e.g. Ammaturo 2017). Yet, in contemporary Poland, where legal and cultural civil rights of non-heteronormative persons are basically not protected and right-wing populism and nationalism have been capitalizing on anti-EU and anti-LGBT stance, the EU-related idea of sexual citizenship keeps its emancipatory potential. On the one hand, the hopes that EU accession in 2004 would bring an end to discrimination and secure equal rights to non-heteronormative persons have not been fulfilled. On the other one, for mainstream professionalized LGBT movements the EU remains an important source of funding, the last instance in legal battles, and a symbol in political protests. While the EU seems not to be the primary point of reference in the grassroots settings where activist groups are neither large, nor professionalized, the idea of sexual citizenship is still an important reason for social and political mobilization. In the proposed paper I analyze how the concept of LGBT rights and its various ramifications have been adapted (and contested) by LGBT and queer grassroots activism in Wroclaw, a city in southwestern Poland. Regardless of discrepancies in their views about community building, political goals and strategies, groups and individuals are activating diverse networked solidarities and institutional collaborations to pursue initiatives aimed at transforming local forms of the oppressive present.

Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork research on queer social movements in Bologna (IT) during the pandemic, this paper will examine queer mutualism, discussing its material limitations and its and political and discursive implications concerning care and the social reproduction of queer movements.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on my current PhD project, drawing on fieldwork research done in Bologna (IT) during the first year of pandemic. It will merge my involvement in the subject as both a queer activist and as a researcher, investigating queer social movements, collectives and networks.

Taking pandemic urban Italy as a setting, I will critically reflect on queer mutualism (“mutualismo queer”, i.e. grassroots queer mutual aid networks drawing on different local and transnational heritages of worker’s mutual aid, HIV activism, feminist anti-violence centers – CAV, etc.) in such context. Despite its often limited material impact, queer mutualism’s importance resides especially in its discursive opposition to a narrow, productivity-oriented and familistic notion of care which was and is prevalent in contemporary Italian society, especially during the beginning of pandemic. Moreover, queer mutualism is politically significant in resetting the queer political agenda from being seemingly merely concerned with civil rights to addressing social rights, class issues and the material conditions of queer lives.

I will also reflect on the impediments and difficulties encountered in the enactment of queer mutualism, especially concerning issues of horizontality, mutuality, affective resistance to being cared for and to care for, as well as the fragility and precariousness of the networks. Such difficulties emerge clearly in the social reproduction of the movements themselves, which is also a labor of care, and reflecting on them can help to imagine alternatives to both current conceptualizations of care and to the organization of queer social movements.

Paper short abstract:

Queer farmer activists contest and reimagine the values of the U.S. 'family farm.' What horizons of hope are visible through queer ruptures in the heteropatriarchal agrarian imaginary? What lessons and limitations are evident in the pre-figurative work of queer farming?

Paper long abstract:

Advocates of localizing food systems in the U.S. idealize the 'family farm' as an independent economic unit whose survival and proliferation is necessary to transformation from a global, centralized food system to a decentralized, local food system. Originating in the colonial imagination, the 'family farm' presumes a yeoman farmer at the head of a heteronormative family. Social scientists have contested the obfuscation of farming women in the narrowly imagined 'family farm.' (Sachs 1983, Lobao and Meyer 1995, Adams 1991) Recently, attention to LGBTQ+ farmers demonstrates the challenges they face in navigating agrarian heteropatriarchy. (Wypler 2019, Black 2022) Utilizing multi-year ethnographic research, this paper shows how the heightened visibility of queer farmers in local food system activism contests and reimagines the 'family farm.' Following Muñoz' assertion that queerness is essentially future-oriented, my research asks in what ways the future of agriculture itself is being queered by the grassroots network of queer Hudson Valley farmers. (Muñoz 2009) It explores social and environmental landscapes of queer-safe rural spaces, cooperative business models espoused by farms rejecting the heteronormative family as the irreducible economic unit, and the leakage of queer ways of thinking and doing, such as queer botany, into food and farming spaces previously presumed to be neutral to gender and sexuality. What horizons of hope are visible through queer ruptures in the agrarian imaginary? And, building on Bloch's theorization of concrete utopias, what lessons and limitations are evident in the pre-figurative work of queer farming?

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores understanding of equality in Christian denominations among women of faith. Church becomes a dynamic place for intersection of different equality regimes: political struggles for gender equality, anti-gender movement and faith-based notions of equality.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the recent case of reversal of women's ordination in Latvian Lutheran Evangelical Church. The Christian denominations have become vocal political force against gender equality policies, showing the church as a dynamic place for intersection of these different equality regimes. To understand the intersection, perception and practice of equality among women in Latvian Christian religious communities has been researched showing different basis for defining equality and seeking it. In community of faith around the globe so called anti-gender movements are well documented, while alternative understandings of equality are less researched. Latvian data shows that women in Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran tradition see equality relationally - as the result of their personal relationship with God and their community, largely rejecting political solutions in achieving equality. The vision of equality among religious women includes a power dimension regardless gender equality or anti-gender framing. Leadership roles in the church thus are seen related to values of sharing, solidarity, service, humility and care rather than based on the hierarchical value of the position. The paper focuses on the women’ s voice in balancing traditionalist, Christian and political understandings of gender equality and implementing a relational agency and position in everyday lives and service to church, allowing to expand J. Butler’ s (2021) inquiry into utopia of equality and force of non-violence there.