Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey

Front matter

XC THINKING GENDER IN TRANSNATIONAL TIMES

Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey

Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance

Foreword

There is a complex interplay in transnational feminist and queer politics that asks for us to think together, while the tensions of doing this work remain firmly grounded in the politics we seek to critique and indeed dismantle. The Anglo-American dominance in geographies of sexualities work has been brought into question (Kulpa and Silva 2016; Silva and Ornat 2016), critiquing me and “the us” of this canon in ways that are necessary and uncomfortable (Browne and Bakshi 2014; Browne 2015; Vieira and Silva 2014). This does not contest the importance of work within and about Anglo-American hegemonies, instead it can encourage us to see the limits and boundaries that create our (sub)disciplines. It can also be deployed to encourage us to think together, to work together, and to cross borders not only in conferences, but through creating work that enables new conversations, new thoughts, and new alliances. This book is working through how we might do this, as well as what we can learn from the process, while offering key openings to consider how much there is within and beyond our own national contexts, and our positionings. In this foreword, I want to name some of the key problematics it engages, particularly geopolitical hegemonies in the construction of knowledges vi Foreword and activisms and also to articulate the potentials and import of transnational research that works with humility and an awareness of the potentials, as well as the tensions and possibilities of reiterating existing power relations.

Working Within and Beyond Geopolitical Hegemonies

Feminists in the late twentieth century called our attention to situated knowledges, that is, how we create our theory and research as well as what we write. Situated knowledges matter to what we create, how we create, who we write for, and the power relations that make knowledges possible (Stanley and Wise 1983; Haraway 1988; Harding 1997). If all knowledge is seen to be situated then who constructs this knowledge is central to what is produced (Haraway 1990). This understanding has been developed, particularly in geographies of sexualities to consider the where of knowledge production (Brown 2012). Such a lens asks us not only to consider the spatialities of everyday lives and positionalities in the reconstitution of research, data collection, theorization, and broader knowledge production, it sees where we are as inherent to these actions, processes, and knowledge creation.

Complex and intertwined power relations reconstitute not only us, but the places that we write about, how we write about them, and the worlds we create through our research and writing. These power relations are apparent in the discussions of Anglo-American hegemonies and the universalizations of sexualities research and theorizing (Brown 2012; Browne and Bakshi 2013; Kulpa 2014; Kulpa and Mizielinska 2011; Silva and Ornat 2016; Mikdashi and Puar 2016). For example, Gavin Brown writes critically about the spatialities of homonormative theorizations in the early twenty-first century. He contended that where these theorizations occurred mattered to the constitution of their form, substance, and associated politics:

Foreword vii

The development of theories of Homonormativity has primarily occurred in the same limited range of global cities that it studies—critical thought about homonormativity is largely the product of exactly the same spaces and social networks that it critiques (Brown 2012, 1067).

Creating theory from specific nations, and also specific urbanities within these nations, creates knowledge in particular ways that are often unacknowledged because of who and where the theorists are from. Moreover, Kulpa (2014) argues that some places are seen as creating universalizing theorizations, whereas others become “case studies” of these theories or the theories emerging are seen as place based. Thus, it is critical to theorize about, but also from outside the Anglo-American dominance, and the assumptions that can define the fields of sexualities and genders, and to do so from positions that understand theories from Anglo-American hegemonies as inherently built and located there.

Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey: Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance points to issues of visibilities and outness that exemplify not only the creation of Anglo-American knowledges, but also understandings of politics that rely on these lenses. Tucker (2009) focuses on South African interconnections, localities, and social relations in constituting sexual lives. Noting the limitations of legislation on everyday lives, he contends, much like this book, that there is a need to foster awareness of the day-to-day needs of queers, including visibility between different groups—such that no one group is able to dictate the terms of visibility to another. Here questioning visibility as the preferred form of activism questions the terms of the Anglo- American LGBTI+ sexual politics that have been presumed to emerge and be manifest in particular ways. Kulpa and Mizielinska (2011) critically contest the linearity of such politics and the trajectories that are assumed from specific nations, creating the concept of geo-temporalities to critique a form of progress based on specific Anglo-American/Global North progress narratives. What they, and Tucker, share with this book is the importance of recognizing everyday acts of resistance and resilience as possibilities for undoing hegemonies in multi-scalar ways that refuse geopolitical hierarchies that define good/bad, progress/backwardness, East/West, the global North/global South.

viii Foreword

These binary narratives have created geographical materialities, imaginaries, and power relations in the twenty-first century that have defined issues of sexualities and gender. They have strongly played out in the differentiation of the global North as “progressive” and the global South as “backwards” (Kulpa and Mizielitska 2011; Kulpa and Silva 2016). Based in legislation (such as same-sex marriage, employment protections, and gender recognition) that only partially tells the story, such comparisons act as a “marker that distinguishes the so-called advanced western democracies in opposition to their ‘underdeveloped others,” thereby justifying “the current re-articulation of orientalist and colonial politics" (Sabsay 2012, 606). Such markers of advancement, viewed through lenses of “progress” and the “Other” to such progress, backwardness, often focus on legislative reform as a key means of both establishing difference from other nations, but more importantly superiority (Browne et al. 2015). Yet the measures of “progress” and their fuzzy geographical definitions can often fail to account for the implementation of legislation and what makes life livable for LGBTI+ people in ways that engage with, and diverge from, legislative regimes (Browne et al. 2020). Rejecting East- West, North-South assumptions and challenging the “usual” networks and connections that can be assumed to replicate this is a critical task that this book takes up and develops.

Such a move does not refuse issues of power. It is important that similarities and divergences are examined in ways that refuse easy narratives and assumptions, without negating the key power relations that define sexual and gendered lives, politics, and resistances. This includes recognizing the importance of legislation that enables legal rights and protections, but also not assuming that legislation is a panacea, or that its absence creates specific (perhaps always diminished, "less than") lives, activisms, and solidarities.

Foreword ix

Possibilities of Transnational Working: Rejecting Comparative Hierarchies

Consideration of the where of knowledge production and how politics are recreated and narrated through comparisons between nations necessitates a multi-scalar, networked exploration of power that reconstitutes not only the places we inhabit, as they reconstitute us, but also how these places relate to each other. A key decolonial critique and insight in geographies of sexualities and beyond is a rejection of a solely comparative understanding of nations (e.g., Kulpa 2014; Kulpa and Silva 2016; Banerjea et al. 2018). Transnationalism has much promise in this arena. The relationalities between places as well as various divisions and hierarchies are key objects of study and represent necessary explorations. Working transnationally offers the possibilities of refusing a hierarchized and comparative model, based in Anglo-American understandings and conceptualizations of progress. This opens up spaces to explore relationalities between places that create solidarities.

Perhaps we might consider the betweenness theorized by Rose (1999) who contended that the space of relation between bodies should be studied using Irigaray’s theorizing to work through spaces of “betweenness”:

Thus there may be a geography of corporeal space that does not entail solid shape, boundaries, fixity, property and possession whether of the self or others. It may be possible to embody a space that allows a different kind of betweenness. (Rose 1999, 254)

It is possible to extend Rose’s conceptualization here to include bodies, places, networks, and lives in a multi-scalar way. That would enable a consideration of how the end of presumptions of “solid” shapes, fixities, and boundaries that define self/other, might also be applied to nations, nationalisms, and sexual politics as they are continually reformed in spaces of betweenness, and spaces between us. This refuses separateness and eschews closure/exclusion:

x Foreword

Irigaray is trying to work through a space in which the separateness of identity does not entail closure, exclusion and imprisonment, where women can be separate yet connected.

(Rose 1999, 254, my emphasis)

Our lives are created across borders and our (im)mobilities matter, and these movements or lack thereof are a key focus of geographies of sexualities work (DiFeliciantonio 2020; Gorman-Murray 2007, 2009; Lewis 2014; Gorman-Murray and Nash 2016a, b). They are “separate yet connected.” It is important to both understand and to query the primacy of the nation-state in reconstituting sexual and gendered lives and politics to explore as well our interconnectedness. This does not negate the place and importance of the nation, for example, the Irish referendum on same-sex marriage was located in and through imaginings of the Irish mammy (see Browne et al. 2018, 2019). Yet even in recognizing the import of context-specific resistances, this is undertaken in relation to relational and mobile considerations (Nash and Gorman-Murray 2014, 2015). In our current interconnected world, there is a need to consider how sexual and gender politics, manifestations, lives, and cultures are created. This requires a consideration of moving between specificities of context and their inter-relational creations and solidarities.

Such a conceptualization of betweenness offers pluralisms that refuse comparisons without negating legislation or national contexts as relational constructions. Transnational betweenness refuses hierarchies that rely on specific forms of knowledge and activisms. Instead, as Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey: Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance shows, contemporaneously it is in what is shared, as well as what is different that is crucial to recognizing that national struggles are created through international connections, and emboldened by these networks.

As people and things move across borders and boundaries, so too do ideas, emotions, and friendships—creating networks, links, and solidarities. Transnational solidarities and working across nation-states are critical sites of investigation as we travel, link, and network, and our resistances gain support. Exploring “allies in struggle” as this book does is critical in contesting the here/there, progress/backward narratives that

Foreword xi assume discrete units and recreate colonial relations of power that favor particular nations. Such coalitions are imperfect, limited, and partial; they can reproduce power relations and tensions, and they also hold the potential to be transformative, to create new understandings, new lives, open new horizons, and new possibilities. Indeed, tensions are key to our understandings, to our histories, and to divides that can re-emerge generationally as well as internationally, along with those that are transcended and papered-over to emerge later. There are possibilities in examining then both the possibilities and the tensions.

Conclusion: The “Largely Untold” Stories of Transnational Activisms

As I was writing this in Dublin, Ireland, an email appeared in my inbox from the EPIC—the Irish Emigration Museum advertising their “Out in the World: Ireland’s LGBTQ+ Diaspora” exhibit. The exhibit was described as:

Across the generations, Irish LGBTQ+ people have emigrated and found opportunities to live and love openly. Yet this journey was rarely a simple transition from an oppressive island to a liberal wider world. Irish LGBTQ+ emigrants often faced prejudice abroad. Home, once a place of shame and silence, could also become a welcoming site of return. This exhibition highlights 12 stories from the vast yet largely untold history of Ireland’s LGBTQ+ diaspora.

This reminded me that the personal is always political, and the political is always personal. As Irish LGBTI+ people, our lives are often transnational. Leaving and returning is often the focus of transnational/migration work but the “largely untold” histories are also reflected in contemporary stories of activism, politics, and relationships that operate between nations (see Binnie and Klesse 2012).

There can be little doubt that there is an undervaluing and an under-exploration of feminist and LGBTI+ activisms within nations. Yet beyond national boundaries these are even more sparse. We have long xii Foreword acknowledged the diversities of feminist and LGBTTI+ politics. This is predominantly explored through divisions between these politics, their contestations, objects of contention, theoretical groundings, political understandings, and tactics. However, what is less well known is the pluralisms required to understand transnational feminist and LGBTI+ activisms and resistances. Formed across diverse spaces and scales, we need to understand how they can both address and reproduce inequalities that define our geopolitical and interpersonal worlds. Alongside this, we need to look to transnationalism as offering potential moments of hope, solidarity, and care.

Dublin, Ireland Kath Browne

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Acknowledgments

The work on this book has been generously supported by a number of institutions and colleagues whom we want to acknowledge. The book is based on research conducted within the project Spaces of Resistance. A Study of Gender and Sexuality in Times of Transformations funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenbergs Foundation (KAW 2015.0180, 2016— 2021). With this support we were able to conduct ethnographic work and action research, deliver conference and workshop presentations, and organize several internal meetings where the book’s conceptual and methodological framework was developed. We also benefited from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond’s Research Initiation Grant (F17-1391:1) which allowed us to organize the workshop “Transnational solidarities: Gender and sexuality beyond geopolitics” in 2018 in Gothenburg where we presented the project to a broader milieu of gender and queer studies scholars. The intellectual stimulus of this workshop was crucial for our project. We are thankful to all workshop participants for two days of fruitful and engaging dialogues. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the contribution of Hiilya Arik, postdoctoral fellow in Spaces of

XV xvi Acknowledgments

Resistance, to the entire project and to the development of the book’s concept.

The research that laid the foundation for this book has been presented individually and collectively on various occasions. We are grateful to Erika Svedberg and all participants of the Gender Studies Collegium Seminar at Malmö University where Mia and Olga were invited to present some parts of this research. We are also heartily thankful to Prof. Teresa Kulawik from Sódertórn University who arranged the Gender Studies Seminar where Mia, Olga, and Selin presented the book concept for the first time. We are also indebted to activists and scholars from the Feminist and Queer Solidarities Beyond Borders project for their feedback on our approach to the analysis of feminist and LGBTI+ activisms in Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey. We thank our colleagues Deniz Akin, Erika Alm, Kris Clarke, Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, Nico Miskow Friborg, Roberto Kulpa, Adi Kuntsman, Linda Lapina, Lena Martinsson, Faith Mkwesha, Diana Mulinari, Mina Skouen, Anna-Maria Sórberg, and Manté Vertelyté whose intellectual and personal support inspired us across the years of the project. We are also grateful to Kath Browne for the insightful foreword.

We want to acknowledge that writing this book was a truly inspirational professional journey for the three of us. We consider our collaboration as a genuine example of collective feminist knowledge production where co-authors felt stimulated and supported intellectually but even more so emotionally and personally during the hardships of the academic writing process. This book is a fully collective product at all stages—from writing the book proposal to drafting these acknowledgments. We hope that the readers will sense the importance and value of collective knowledge production for feminist and queer scholarship in times of neoliberal individualization in academia.

We would also like to thank all our research partners for contributing with their precious time and expertise to this project. We regret that we cannot acknowledge each and every of you due to anonymity and ethical concerns. But we hope that you will recognize your stories which are the most important source of inspiration and knowledge provided in this book.

Acknowledgments xvii

On a personal note:

Olga wants to thank Anna Alimpieva, Valentina Cherevatenko, Olga Dzhumailo, Dana Jirous, Asya Khodyreva, Marina Grasse, Maria Kokhanovskaya, Inga Luther, Galina Orlova, Nadia Plungian, and Alexandra Yaseneva for the special treatment and support during her fieldwork in Russia and Germany. Thanks to Dmitry Vorontsov for arranging the guest researcher visit to the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don. I am also thankful to Masha Neufeld and Katharina Wiedlack as well as the other organizers and participants of the conference Fucking Solidarity: Queering Concepts on/from a Post-Soviet Perspective (Vienna, Austria), for the great intellectual stimulus that was crucial for this project. Thank you, Sophija Savtchouk, Valerie Havemann, and especially Nasta Mancewicz for transcribing most of the interviews for this research. And thank you, my friend Nastasia Makarenko, for your occasional but very warm company in Moscow.

Selin is grateful for the political and intellectual discussions she was very lucky to have with Aysun Çeper, Cemre Baytok, Ece Kocabıçak, Dilan Yılmaz, Fatoş Hacıvelioğlu, Filiz Karakuş, Gülnur Acar Savran, Nehir Kovar, Selda Tuncer, and Yasemin Yıldırım in different stages of her research period. These people and the comrades and colleagues in Çatlak Zemin, Lezbidüg, Feminist ve Queer Araştırmacılar Ağı, Kadınlar Birlikte Güçlü, and Kadınlar Greve İnisiyatifi have all contributed to the development of the Turkish case study. I am indebted to Aylin Akpınar and Zsófia Lóránd for inviting me to present my research results at Linnaeus University, Department of Sociology, and the Left Feminist Theory and Historiography Workshop at the Czech Academy of Sciences, respectively. Special thanks goes to Onur Kılıç, whose excellent research report helped me to design the fieldwork in Turkey, and to Gökşen Ayvaz and Irem Gerkuş who transcribed most of the interviews I conducted as part of my research. Warmest thanks also go to Alexa Tjornhom, Jenny Lind, and Melih Arslan for their invaluable friendship in Gothenburg, and to Ewa Maczynska, Bonbon, and Yucca for their lovely company while I worked on this book under lockdown in Budapest.

Kılıç, Nadia Ruiz Bravo, Marta Cuesta, and Sama Khosravi Ooryad for all enriching dialogues on the topics of this book. I have had the pleasure of giving presentations of work in progress at the European Sociological Conference in Prague, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, at the Young Academy of Sweden, the center for Digital Humanities in the University of Gothenburg, Humlab in Umea University, and the European Feminist Research Conference in Géttingen. All these conversations helped me to further develop some of the ideas brought forward here. During the work on this research, I have also been invited as guest professor at the University of Vienna, Lund University, and the University of Góttingen and am grateful for the inspiring intellectual exchanges in these environments.

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to our editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan—Poppy Hull, Nina Guttapalle, and Connie Li—for their swift and generous responses to our queries along the way. We are also grateful for the fruitful feedback to our book proposal provided by three anonymous reviewers and we are especially indebted to the reviewer who read the whole book-length manuscript after submission.

Praise for Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey

“This is a stimulating book that resists easy answers and embraces meandrous tensions inhabiting “Spaces of Resistance’ of feminist and queer movements (notwithstanding researchers’ own positionalities across academia and activism). Together with the authors we ponder the multifaceted forms of resistance that permeate and underlie collective resilience. Or rather resiliences and resistances, always already in plural, and not of the individualist, neoliberal form—but of the feminist and queer collective commoning, caring and becoming in solidarity.”

—Roberto Kulpa, Lecturer, Edinburgh Napier University, UK

“The multiscalar transnational approach to spaces of resistance in this book provides an original and sophisticated contribution to research on transnational feminism and resistance.”

—Pauline Stoltz, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark xix

Contents

Introduction Transnational Spaces of Resistance

5 Spaces of Appearance and the Right to Appear: March 8 in Local Bodily Assemblies

Index

191 239 xxi

List of Figures

“Russia aiming towards the future.” The photo captures feminist intervention during Women’s Historical Night in May 2018 in Kaliningrad. The photo contains

the portrait of Hannah Arendt in black-and-white

on the building colored in the tricolor of the Russian flag with the text “Russia aiming towards the future.” Arendt spent her childhood in Königsberg, today’s Kaliningrad, that was a German city until 1945. Creators: Maria Kokhanovskaya and Alexandra Solodovnikova (Photo Credit: Olga Sasunkevich)

Pride flag waving in the light wind outside of Kirkenes Church (Photo Credit: Mia Liinason)

Capture: Feminist rally in St. Petersburg (Photo credit: Olga Sasunkevich)

Preparations for the Feminist Night March

at the Feminist Space (Feminist Mekan) (Photo credit: Selin Cagatay)

xxiii

A)