Browne, K. and Nash, Catherine J and Gorman-Murray, Andrew
(2018)
Geographies of heteroactivism: Resisting sexual rights in the reconstitution of Irish nationhood.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43.
pp. 526-539.
ISSN 0020-2754
Abstract
Legislative and cultural changes have produced significant shifts in sexual and
gender rights. Although this has been extensively studied in relation to those who
have “won” and in relation to the normalisations that these changes create, there
is little scholarship on the emergence of new resistances to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans equalities. We employ the term heteroactivism to name the ways
that resistances to sexual and gender rights have moved from vilifying “the homosexual,” towards more subtle and nuanced resistances in places with sexual and
gender equalities legislation. Geography is key because legislation and its enactment varies spatially, and national legislations and imaginings recreate distinctive,
place-based heteroactivism. Paying attention to the ideologies of those who
opposed same-sex marriage in Ireland’s 2015 referendum, this paper explores
how the boundaries of Irishness were central to heteroactivist campaigns, drawing
on specific invocations of relatedness between a female child and her mother, the
quintessential Irish Mammy. Using a close reading of the textual and visual elements of a “Vote No” poster, the paper elucidates the presences and silences of
new forms of resistances that seek to recuperate what was once not only “common sense” heterosexuality, but also seen as the essence of Irishness. In doing so,
the paper extends understandings of sexuality–gender–nation–state nexus by critically interrogating the ideologies of those who contest progressive state sexual
and gender legislation.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
bisexual and trans; discourse and visual analysis; Gay; Ireland; lesbian; motherhood; nation; sexuality; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography |
| Item ID: |
13255 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12255 |
| Depositing User: |
IR Editor
|
| Date Deposited: |
23 Sep 2020 11:13 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers |
| Publisher: |
Wiley-Blackwell |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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