Call for Contributors-please consider or let your friends and colleagues
know!

The Journal of Lesbian Studies will be devoting a special issue to the
topic of LESBIANS, SEXUALITY, AND ISLAM, edited by Huma Ahmed-Ghosh,
ghosh@mail.sdsu.edu.

There has been very little published work on lesbians and Islam. Possible
topics and methods include, but are not limited to religion, Quran,
Hadith, Sharia, personal experiences of Muslim women, ethnic and regional
diversities, oral histories, feminist theory, research, fiction, and
poetry. Authors may use a pseudonym if they prefer.

Please send a one-page abstract of your proposed contribution to Huma
Ahmed-Ghosh at ghosh@mail.sdsu.edu by August 1, 2011. Proposals will be
evaluated for originality and writing style, as well as how all the
contributions fit together. Potential authors will be invited to write
full articles in the range of 5,000 to 7,500 words.

We hope you will consider writing about your scholarship or experiences,
so that this important topic receives the attention it deserves.

Huma Ahmed-Ghosh, Ph.D.
San Diego State University
Email: ghosh@mail.sdsu.edu

Contact: ghosh@mail.sdsu.edu
Announcement ID: 185985

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=185985

jane
xx

jane
xx

Valentina’s note:

I am looking for participants to take part in a research study about gender, sexual orientation and language use in men.

If you take part, you will complete a quick personality questionnaire, have your height and weight taken and play a word-game similar to “Articulate!”, where you will be asked to describe different objects.

The study takes about 30 mins and you will receive £10 to thank you for your participation.

All the collected data are anonymous. This piece of research will be part of my DPhil in Psychology on gender, sexual orientation and speech.

In order to take part, participants need to self-identify as gay men, be 18 or over and be native speakers of British English.

If anyone would be able to help out, please email me at v.cartei@sussex.ac.uk or phone me on 07966882820.

Your contribution is much appreciated!

Val

The 40 year anniversary of the founding of GLF in the UK on the LSE campus gave momentum to look back how LGBT rights have developed and become globalized in this period. The conference is an opportunity to engage in a discussion on the changing context of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) rights in the last 40 years. It is bringing together academics and activists involved in the development of the global LGBT movement. It will look at the historical context of the development of GLF and bring together current, and globalised, debates on sexuality, equality activism and needs.

The conference will consider the ways in which the rights context has impacted upon the lives of LGBT people both in the UK and in the global arena; What are the different ways of understanding strategies and technologies for sexuality rights in different contexts? What are the lessons to be learned from an internationalist perspective?

The conference will include a key note address, panel sessions and more open discussion based sessions. In addition, a ‘witness seminar’ methodology will include key contributors associated with the genesis of GLF in the UK in early 1970s.
Participants include:

Matt Cook Birkbeck College
Sonia Corrêa the founder of SOS-Corpo- Instituto Feminista para a Democracia (Brazil)
Vikram Doctor The Economic Times-India
Silvia Gallotti LSE Library
Joel Gustave Nana Executive Director African Men for Sexual Health and Rights(AMSHeR)
Sally Hines University of Leeds
Suhraiya Jivraj Oxford Brookes University
Katherine Johnson University of Brighton
Akshay Khanna Institute of Development Studies
Robert Kulpa Birkbeck College
Anthony Manion GALA Wits archives
Frank Mugisha Uganda Executive Director Ugandan Sexual Minorities Group
David Paternotte FNRS/Université libre de Bruxelles
Rahul Rao SOAS
Jeff Redding Saint Louise University Law School
Helen Sauntson University of Birmingham
Tamsila Tauqir Director of the Safra Project

The conference is open to all and free. However due to space restrictions prior registration is required. If you are planning to join us for the conference please e-mail: m.h.seckinelgin@lse.ac.uk or Dianne Josephs d.e.josephs@lse.ac.uk to reserve your place. Conference web page is http://www2.lse.ac.uk/genderInstitute/events/40_Years_On.aspx

Venue is Russell Square, SOAS College Buildings, Room G3, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H OXG London, United Kingdom

Its organized by Professors Aeyal Gross (Tel-Aviv/SOAS) & Dianne Otto (Melbourne/SOAS)

Contents include:

Panel I: Resisting Hegemonies – Local and Transnational Encounters

Chair: Akhil Katyal (SOAS)

Vanja Hamzić (King’s College London) – ‘(Sub)alternative Muslim Perceptions of Law and Justice: Beyond Politics of Fiqh and Inadequacy of Human Rights Discourse’

Rahul Rao (SOAS) – ‘The location of homophobia: notes from Uganda’

Eddie Bruce-Jones (Birkbeck) – ‘Queering Culture: Some notes on transnational LGBTI legal work’

Maria Federica Moscati (SOAS) – ‘Use of Anthropology for Queer Culture and Marriage Debate’

Panel II: ‘Homonationalisms’: Reading the Effects of Progressive Legal Reforms

Chair: Nadje Al-Ali (SOAS)

Arturo Sanchez Garcia (Kent) – ‘Mexico City is wonderland!; The new sexual politics in the Mexican state(s)’

Suhraiya Jivraj (Oxford Brookes) – ‘‘The Dutch homo-emancipation policy and its silencing effects on queer Muslim organizing’

akshay kahana (Sussex) – ‘Three hundred and seventy seven ways of being – Sexualness and the Indian self’

Panel III: What Queer Legal Theory Might ‘Do’ Beyond Rights

Chair: Prabha Kotiswaran (SOAS)

Daniel Monk (Birkbeck) – ‘Reading Wills Queerly: Beyond Rights’

Emily Grabham (Kent) – ‘Queer Times: Critical Perspectives on Law’s Temporalities’

Les Moran (Birkbeck) – ‘Legal Queeries – Past, Present Future’

Elena Loizidou (Birkbeck) – ‘“To Have and Have Not” : No strings attached’

Panel IV: Queering International Law

Chair: Caroline Osella

Teemu Ruskola (Emory) – ‘Law of the Queer Nations’

Gina Heathcote (SOAS) – ‘The Retrosexuality of International Law’

Aeyal Gross (Tel Aviv/SOAS) – ‘Does each person have a sexual orientation?’

Dianne Otto (Melbourne/SOAS) – ‘Transnational Homo-Assemblages: contesting “gender” in counter-terrorism discourses’

As he points out, far from the Mosley reversal being a victory for democracy against the rich and famous who would abuse the legal process, its actually a victory for those with deep pockets. It means, in future, that those with money to burn, can threaten papers with ruinous legal action on the off chance that the individuals decide to take those papers to court and win – and it will be a brave newspaper indeed that takes on that sort of risk.

I will, however, add a perspective that I have on this decision both as a journalist and as an activist/advocate.

The rich and powerful evade the press

First up as journalist, I have little faith in how the law works right now. It does not protect the press and, increasingly, I have found my life made miserable by the fears of editors in respect of what someone rich and powerful MIGHT do by way of retaliation. I have, over the last two or three years, every so often encountered a story where I have someone bang to rights.

In one instance, a few months back, a well-off and very well-connected business man lied to me. I know he lied because I asked him a series of very careful questions and then ran his answers back to him. Yes, yes, yes and yes. I had my story.

Until about four hours later he issued an official release in which he said – you’ve guessed it: no, no, no and no.

I discussed this with my editor at the time and… we didn’t run the story. Too risky. The guy was probably a bad lot. Had probably broken the law. But he had the money (and the attitude) to start a libel action and, given the cost of defending such, the publication in question could not have afforded to take him on. The story died.

That, I guess, in a nutshell, is why we need cheaper law.

The marginalised will suffer as before

My second experience lies in playing off-stage advocate to an individual on the receiving end of a professional complaint. For reasons that will become clear, I’m not going to go into detail here. But it is a not uncommon experience: because I write about the law, have a good legal mind and also deal on a regular basis with members of marginalised groups (from LGBT, to kink, to sex work) , I do get asked for help and advice.

I give it where I can. Occasionally I muck in a bit more. In this instance, my friend was in an appalling position. A large part of her woes derived from press misconduct. Her best line of defence lay in going even more public. But personal reasons (including the real possibility of physical threat to her and to her nearest and dearest) meant the last thing she could do was go public.

And that’s true not just of her, but of many others I deal with: they are treated very badly by employers and the like because of their marginalised status; but they are terrified of press coverage, because that will out them even further.

The only possible approach for my friend was an injunction. Except she would have had difficulty affording such and an injunction without stipulation that the press could not report on the fact of it was worse than useless.

The logic is pretty obvious, really. If you don’t want the press reporting on your private affairs, there really is no point getting an injunction that says they are allowed to report you have an injunction out, but not what its about. So-called super injunctions make a lot of sense. Because they are pretty much the only way to put a lid on seeing your privacy breached even further.

And so it goes. The UK press will crow today their small victory over Mosley. Meanwhile, I know, the dozens of small people, caught in the same trap as my friend, will see their lives trashed because the press take an interest in them, irrespective of how reasonable that interst, or how guilty they actually are.

And the villains – the ones who really are a menace to society – will continue to hide behind the mere threat of suing.

Wonderful. The British Press can be truly proud of itself today.

jane
xx

Oh my fricking God!

Usually I reckon I am in tune with the national mood – even if I don’t agree with it. But today.. .

No. Just listening to Jeremy Vine on slutwalk. Jeremy is his usual provocative self…but then, that’s his job.

It’s the phone-ins and the e-mails. So many comments around the provocative nature of what women wear. One commenter suggesting that if you dress as a pork chop, you shouldn’t take up lion taming.

Someone else saying that this movement overlooks millions of years of evolution.

I am flabbergasted. Disgusted. Beyond words.

Not that these comments exist.

But the whole tenor (including the old codger on now) suggesting that women should learn “common sense”.

Slutwalk is needed. Utterly. Absolutely. As long as this attitude is endemic, that by dressing in a certain way, one is somehow to blame…

I’m incoherent.

Sorry!

jane
xx

The theme of the meeting invites dialogue and analyses of the interplay of sexuality, sexual identity, gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, citizenship and inequality. As well, the Conference theme invites analyses placed within the context of the state’s willingness (or reticence) to discuss and incorporate practices, discourses, laws and public policies that acknowledge sexual rights for all men and women and promote gender equality, and recognition of sexual diversity.

In line with the IASSCS’ mission, the Conference seeks to promote links between researchers, academics, advocates and activists by addressing the process of taking theory into practise, conceptualizing the meaning and significance of advocacy at the national and community level, and supporting and advancing the implementation of sexual rights.

The VIII IASSCS Conference offers various options for abstract submission: abstracts, posters, films and workshop presentations. For more information regarding the main themes of the Conference, detailed information on the type of proposal submission and the submission guidelines, please click here.

Themes

The main themes of the Conference sessions include, but are not limited to:

- Gender, feminism(s) and the struggle for sexual equality.
- HIV/AIDS and sexual inequality.
- Beyond heterosexuality: LGBTQI challenging and reproducing sexual hegemonies.
- Sexualized states. From sexual repression to sexual democracies: the role of the law, public policies, education, medicine and religion.
- Non-normative bodies as a sexual battleground.
- Development work and the reproduction of sexual inequality.
- Sexual tourism: tensions between development and cultural colonization.
- Pleasure, desire and sexual (in)equality.
- Academia and sexual power relations in the house of sciences.
- The races, ethnicities, social classes and ages of sexual (in)equality.
- Translating (in)equality: cultural globalization of both sexual discrimination and sexual rights.
- Sexuality 2.0: internet, the media and online social networks constructing and deconstructing sexual images, relations and practices.
- The arts performing, reproducing and questioning sexual inequalities.

This 1-day conference will take place on Thursday 15th September 2011, 9am-6pm in Brighton. Conveners of this interdisciplinary conference now welcome proposals from activists, academics, scholars, members of the LGBT community and community groups, students, documentary and film-makers, writers and artists.

The organisers encourage submissions that address a broad range of questions in research and practice on sex, sexuality, queer etc. Presentations might examine the following topics:

- Old and new media
- Hacking, hackers and techno activism
- Online identities
- Pornography
- Sexuality and disabilities
- LGBT
- Sex work
- Scientists, technologists and engineers
- Archives
- Human-Computer Interactions
- Drugs
- Sex toys
- Crafts
- Health and care
- Science fiction
- Bodies
- Digital humanities
- Crip theory
- Reproductive technologies
- Design interactions
- Queering science and technology
- Technological determinism / Social constructivism
- Virtuality
- Cyber and conic
- Medicalizations
- Embodiment and biotechnology

The conference organizers welcome proposals for (a) Individuals papers (b) Sessions (c) Round table discussions (d) workshops and (e) visual presentations or performances.

Email proposals (up to 300 words) to: bssn@brighton.ac.uk
The closing date for the submission of proposals is July 20th 2011.

Registration for the conference will open on July 31st 2011.

For more information about the conference and BSSN, please see:

http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/bssn/conf2011/

The conference organizing committee is:

Georgina Voss
Kath Browne
Shamira Meghani
Nick McGlynn
Irmi Karl
Sharif Mowlabocus
Olu Jensen
Kate O’Riordan

A friend posted, yesterday, to the effect that he didn’t see being misgendered as “harassment”. Hmmm. I said that on the whole I’m not fond of using laws on harassment, as they have been extended far too far.

Sauce for the goose

Still, they have a place, espesh when dealing with bodies like the Police, which seem to think it OK to bend the law so far that it is permissible to arrest someone for possession of a pen. Its only right that they, in their turn, should understand what it feels like to be skewered by a literal application of the law.

And in this case, I think justifiably so.

The nature of harassment

Harassment. In principle, it is a “course of action that causes distress or alarm”. Course of action has more or less been established as two or more similar instances.

So-o. Someone approaching you in the street and calling you names once might be many things (breach of the peace, incitement, etc.) but it wouldn’t be harassment. That same someone approaching you every time you left your house, or following you around town and continuing to call you names WOULD be.

The rule of Three: first contact

So back to the misgendering and the rule of three. Something I am going to push, I think in future.

If someone misgenders me once, I smile politely and, most times, correct them. Its quite likely honest mistake – although possibly ever so slightly thoughtless.

That is, even if I’m not passing, anyone dealing with me can see that I have a non-standard gender presentation. So a bit of commonsense might say: tread carefully.

And whilst I’d make greater allowances for the ordinary man in the street, my tolerance level for public officials who are meant to have had diversity training is far, far lower.

“Here’s your coffee, sir”.

“Not sir, please”.

Rule of three: closing in

If someone misgenders me a second time, I am a bit more assertive.

“Do you want sugar with that, sir?”

“No, thanks. And I did ask you not to call me sir”.

At that point, there can be no question in anyone’s mind what you feel about use of that word. You’ve said it aloud. You’ve told the individual your feelings on the matter. Unless they really, really aren’t listening, they now have no excuse for going there a third time.

Which is why Three’s a charm.

Rule of three: Three’s a charm!

Misgender me again after that, and I think the proper course of action is to ask to speak to the manager and to take matters on from there. If you are sufficiently distressed by the misgendering, its worth pointing out that the person doing it has probably just committed a crim offence. That you would like words to be had, and an apology. Then play it by ear.

Is that really how I live my life? No. Of course not. If I did: if I picked up on every smallest slight that people inflicted, I’d never get out of the house. But I suspect people know and get it. There is a world of difference between someone making honest mistake and someone misgendering for the purposes of winding up or putting you down.

I’ve never actually experienced that from a police officer (which is good): but if I did, then an official complaint feels like the only way to go. I have experienced it from other officials very occasionally (its rarer than you think), and when I have, I have almost always reported it.

jane
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