In case you missed this seminar, you can view a recording of it by clicking here or seeing the video embedded below (you will need a University of Brighton account to access this):

 

 

Who Wins?: Productive Divisions in ‘Anti-Gender’ Times

 

Divisions around gender and sexualities drive political agendas and affect people’s lives. This paper brings together two seemingly incompatible studies to explore the effects and implications of these divisions. RESIST explores anti-gender mobilisations and feminist/queer resistances to these, and Beyond Opposition contends that in exploring heteroctivisms, including anti-gender, we need to consider social polarisations including those who are opposed to, or have concerns about, socio legal changes including same sex marriage, gender recognition and abortion. Both consider the implications of what is extensively studied through social movements, (inter-)state actions and the media, through a different lens. The focus of these projects is on people’s lives and their everyday spatialities. This not only offers a complimentary analysis of what can be seen when examining discursive and material political actions, it also asks for different conceptual frames. Namely, this data questions the oppositional binaries that are (at times necessarily) (re)formed.

Exploring key findings across these two studies, I create new conceptual and practical insights into contemporary gender and sexuality landscapes. I speak back to the calls to ‘listen’ to ‘both sides’ in ways that presume they are equal. Instead, in developing new theorisations, I refute the equivalence and lack of power analyses that these ‘solutions’ promote. To do this I cover 3 key areas that emerge across these studies: 1. Controversy is created and reproduces people’s lives through divisions; 2. There are lived effects to anti-gender across sides; 3. Resistances emerge because of these experiences.  Overall, I contend that the creation of controversies are core to driving divisions through oppositional binaries that can negatively affect all sides in differential ways. These in turn drive resistances that reiterate the binaries and  reinforce divisions. The productiveness of divisions then needs to be critically conceptualised, beyond ‘winning the argument/fight’.

 

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