This study explores the varied ways sexual minority organisations in Kenya negotiate their choices, decisions and actions when determining how, when, and why to be publicly visible or retreat from visibility. This they have to do in the context of the threats of retribution on the part of Kenyan state leaders to their efforts to protect sexual minority rights. Sexual minority organising carries the risk of verbal abuse and the threat of arrest and other retribution. In spite of this, sexual minorities have organised themselves into publicly visible social movement organisations over the last ten years. In addition to the hostility of the Kenyan state, these organisations operate within the context of the uneven situation with regard to the constraints or otherwise of organising as sexual minorities between the Global South and North. The situation is further complicated by the role of donors, who bring their own experiences and agendas from the Global North, not always appropriately, into African contexts. Amid such varied responses to sexual minority organising, how, when, and why do Kenyan social movement organizations become publicly visible or retreat from visibility? To recognise the various forces that influence (in)visibility choices that sexual minority organisations have to negotiate, I used sociologist James M. Jasper's (2006) concept of "strategic dilemma". Sexual minority social movement organisations field strategic dilemmas when they strategise around whether and how to become visible, modify their public profile, or forgo political opportunities. To understand the micro-political dynamics of how sexual minority social movement organisations negotiated such strategic dilemmas of visibility and invisibility, I analysed 200 newspaper articles and sexual minority organisational documents and conducted 12 in-depth interviews with staff, members and leaders of sexual minority social movement organisations. Ultimately the findings of this thesis centre on the fluidity of visibility and invisibility as was experienced by Kenyan sexual minority organisations. (ln)visibility was experienced in diverse ways as a process that included a series of steps that do not have absolute values nor are they necessarily coherent in different time and space. My findings advance social movement theorizing by demonstrating the importance of studying social movements in the global South. In addition, my findings contribute to postcolonial feminist and queer theorizing by showing how marginalised sexual and gender minorities in Kenya struggled strategically to assert their democratic inclusion in the state.

To date, the knowledge available about cisgender-trans* couples and their experiences is located in the global North. Research situated in the interest of trans*, transgender and transsexual people's lives most often furthers scholars' understanding of gender. In my research, I employed strategies to look at the experiences of the cisgender partners of masculine identifying trans* persons, in order to learn more about gender Post-apartheid South Africa is a country that is vibrant with discussions in mainstream platforms about contemporary political and socio-economic matters, regularly framed in sexist approaches with clear patriarchal messages. How and where does the trans* masculine person find role models and what is that impact on the cisgender-trans* relationship? Bringing together literature from the global North and South Africa, I formed a theoretical framework that served as the context to support my research. As a feminist, I employ both feminist theory and transgender theory in my qualitative study. I interviewed fourteen cisgender partners of masculine identifying trans* persons. From the rich data, five themes emerged and were analysed through a content analysis approach.

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My dissertation project maps three characters, Lucy, Evie, and the Fur Queen in three contemporary Canadian novels Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), Salt Fish Girl (2002), and Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), respectively, whose embodiments and genders do not conform to norms and who are also the only characters able to imagine a different kind of world. These novels, which I read as magical realist dystopias each maps out a process by which normatively gendered characters can begin to imagine a different social order than the one they have inherited. What is significant about these novels, though, is that this imagining would not be possible without the work of the gender non-conforming characters. My dissertation argues that when a major identity category, like gender, is unsettled, possibilities arise for other major social structures, such as the nation, to be questioned. These novels, each arising out of different racialized and cultural backgrounds, all settle on gender and embodied non-normativity as a site of possibility for imagining a different kind of world. Using education and collaboration, these characters are revolutionary figures who, instead of tearing down dominant geo-political structures in ways that risk replicating dominant geo-political structures or reforming existing ones, argue for a slow revolution in which spaces are built without reference to dominant structures. These spaces are decentralized insofar as the novels suggest that they will need to leave room for revision and change, rather than advocating for a static idea of what utopia is, and they will be built collaboratively, so that there is no one authority. These novels do not suggest that building a different world will be easy, but they show that fast solutions will not work and instead map out the difficult process of learning that is necessary in order for it to happen. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation project maps three characters, Lucy, Evie, and the Fur Queen in three contemporary Canadian novels Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), Salt Fish Girl (2002), and Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), respectively, whose embodiments and genders do not conform to norms and who are also the only characters able to imagine a different kind of world. These novels, which I read as magical realist dystopias each maps out a process by which normatively gendered characters can begin to imagine a different social order than the one they have inherited. What is significant about these novels, though, is that this imagining would not be possible without the work of the gender non-conforming characters. My dissertation argues that when a major identity category, like gender, is unsettled, possibilities arise for other major social structures, such as the nation, to be questioned. These novels, each arising out of different racialized and cultural backgrounds, all settle on gender and embodied non-normativity as a site of possibility for imagining a different kind of world. Using education and collaboration, these characters are revolutionary figures who, instead of tearing down dominant geo-political structures in ways that risk replicating dominant geo-political structures or reforming existing ones, argue for a slow revolution in which spaces are built without reference to dominant structures. These spaces are decentralized insofar as the novels suggest that they will need to leave room for revision and change, rather than advocating for a static idea of what utopia is, and they will be built collaboratively, so that there is no one authority. These novels do not suggest that building a different world will be easy, but they show that fast solutions will not work and instead map out the difficult process of learning that is necessary in order for it to happen.

The universe of Marguerite Yourcenar is primarily masculine and the opposition between masculine and female is capital. Men dominate or initiate the action whereas women are supporting characters or negative. The women often appear as a deadly element which makes contemptible whatever they touch, making themselves by rebound conspicuous human beings, whether it is on the level of their intellect, their femininity, maternity or female sexuality, usually assimilated to prostitution. Prostitution thus crystallizes the attraction and the rejection of the female body. Although the feminine tries to get rid of this dirtiness and this opposition, the combat is impossible and the only exit is to dissolve, to disappear or to become masculine. On the contrary, men appear as positive characters. Fathers have filiations which mothers are unable to have, even if this bond is rather a chosen bond, more intellectual than biological. Homosexuality is a sexuality only fallen to men and makes it possible for them to live without women and to avoid a sexuation. Marguerite Yourcenar had nevertheless to develop a new vocabulary to approach this topic that was still a taboo. Homosexuality in the works of Marguerite Yourcenar is however ambiguous and hides a double and transgressive discourse. Because of this sexuality, men will have to find a different manner to perpetuate through transforming, as the feminine had done it. The need for men to perpetuate themselves without sexuation is actually linked to Far-Eastern philosophies at the same time as to the myth of Oedipus and shows that the masculine and feminine only want to create themselves ex nihilo.

This dissertation examines the role of motherhood in the women’s unit at Northeast Jail, a medium-security facility located in the Northeastern United States. Staff and administrators at Northeast Jail identify the facility as unique in the age of “get-tough” policies toward crime and punishment because the jail provides drug rehabilitation programming, educational opportunities, some job training, and a variety of classes and therapeutic groups. Preparation for parenting is an important part of the therapeutic agenda for women inmates at Northeast Jail. Officially, motherhood manifests in jail in the form of parenting classes and visitation, but motherhood is woven throughout other therapeutic groups, daily life and conversation. In these venues, staff promote an ideal form of motherhood that is not available to women in or out of jail. Thus, constructions of ideal motherhood punish women who cannot practice them. Motherhood is also tied to formal mechanisms of punishment that the jail uses to discipline inmates who break institutional rules. Or, motherhood is invoked to encourage women to behave in institutionally prescribed ways. Furthermore, since the purpose of Northeast Jail is to punish and confine, therapeutic endeavors are often superseded by punitive measures. In order to maintain a rhetoric of rehabilitation in the face of traditional punishment, staff and administrators construct inmates in ways that justify incarceration on therapeutic or punitive grounds. In short, motherhood is an integral part of life at Northeast Jail, even though women are practically and ideologically barred from practicing motherhood in their everyday lives. I will argue that this disconnect, and the primacy of motherhood to women’s lives makes motherhood an effective tool of gendered punishment.

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