Sport is an inherently hegemonic hyper masculinity-building project. Therefore, tensions exist when non-hegemonic groups reclaim sport. This thesis questions how normativity is constructed and resisted in non-normative sporting spaces. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, participant observations, self-reflection qualitative methods and post-structural, spatial and post-colonial theory, I problematize how sportsmanship (sportspersonship) is “cultivated” in a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) soccer league . Specifically, I interrogate how queer sporting bodies negotiate (homo/hetero)normativity by either contesting or confirming neoliberal values of ‘sportsmanship.’ Five interlocking themes that emerged from my data suggest that ‘a queer muscularity’ and ‘a normative queer nationhood’ is being (re)produced by and through queer sporting bodies and sports spaces. I argue that we need to be vigilant of queer sporting spaces that claim to be or are assumed to have greater inclusivity because these spaces may actually facilitate the (re)production of dominant discourses and norms.

Då asylsökande åberopar sexuell läggning eller könsidentitet som asylskäl, är den egna berättelsen inte sällan den enda bevisning som finns att tillgå. Detta innebär att trovärdigheten i den asylsökandes framförande av sin berättelse tillmäts stor vikt. Tidigare forskning har funnit att trovärdighetsbedömningen i västerländska länders asylprövning påverkas av vilken handläggare som hanterar ärendet, och dennas stereotyper av sexuell läggning och könsidentitet. Förekomsten av stereotyper har härletts till kompetens- eller rutinbrist. Exempelvis har det anförts att asylprövande myndigheter och domstolar lider brist på normkritik och nyanserad kunskap i hbtq+-personers olika omständigheter och leverne. Denna studie erbjuder en annan hypotes, med utgångspunkt i etablerad politisk teori och samtida statsvetenskaplig forskning: Att ideologin romantisk liberalism präglar västerländska länders asylprövning. Det finns empiriskt stöd för att människor i västvärlden i allt större utsträckning värdesätter individuell frihet. Tidigare forskning har antagit att detta värdesättande leder till ökad tolerans och välkomnande av ökad mångfald. Ett sådant positivt förhållande ifrågasätts emellertid av flera statsvetare, däribland den svenska statsvetaren Gina Gustavsson. I en avhandling från 2014 presenterar Gustavsson en beskrivning av en romantisk gren inom liberalismen. Denna ideologi framhåller ett obevekligt, provokativt och kreativt uttryck för individens originalitet: både vad avser beskrivningar av vad människan är, och värderande utsagor om hur människan bör vara. En sådan syn, menar Gustavsson, är en förrädisk förståelse för frihet som kan urarta i intolerans, trots att den utges för det motsatta. Med ideologianalys prövas rätts- och myndighetsmaterial från ett urval västerländska länders asylprövning mot en idealtyp av den romantiska liberalismen. Resultatet är att den romantiska liberalismens frihetsideal i flera avseenden kommer till uttryck i urvalet västerländska länders asylprövning. Slutsatsen är att beslutsfattare och utredares upptagenhet av särskilda uttryck för den asylsökandes identitet, kan förstås som en manifestation av den romantiska liberalismens frihetsideal. Detta snarare än som uttryck främst för kompetens- och rutinbrist, såsom tidigare forskning konstaterat. Vidare förs en diskussion kring betydande spänningar mellan den romantiska liberalismen och mänskliga rättigheters universella anspråk. Detta särskilt avseende asylsökandes begränsade möjlighet eller avsikt att leva upp till romantiskt liberala frihetsideal. / As asylum seekers invoke sexual orientation or gender identity as a reason for asylum, their own story is often the only evidence available. This means that the credibility of asylum seeker's presentation of their story, often is given great importance. Previous research shows that credibility assessments in Western countries can differ depending on the sexual orientation and gender identity stereotypes of the case officer who is handling the case. The existence of stereotypes has been related to lack of skills or routine. For example, it is in previous research stated that asylum reviewing authorities and courts suffer from a lack of norm criticism and nuanced knowledge of lgbtq+-persons' different circumstances and living. This study offers another hypothesis, based on established political theory and contemporary political science research: That the ideology romantic liberalism characterizes the asylum procedure in Western countries. There is empirical support for the fact that people in the Western world increasingly value individual freedom. Previous research has assumed that such values leads to increased tolerance and a welcoming of diversity. However, such a positive relationship is questioned by the Swedish political scientist Gina Gustavsson. In Gustavssons’ dissertation from 2014, a description of a romantic branch of liberalism is presented, which elevates a relentless, creative and provocative expression of the individual's originality: both in terms of descriptions of what an individual is, and evaluative statements about what an individual should be. Such a view, Gustavsson says, is a treacherous understanding of freedom that can degenerate into intolerance, even though it is issued to stand for the contrary. With ideology analysis, judicial and governmental material from a sample of Western countries' asylum procedures is tested against an ideal type of romantic liberalism. The results of the analysis show that the ideal of freedom of romanticism, in several respects, can be found in the asylum procedure in a sample of Western countries. The conclusion is that decision makers and investigators' preoccupation with specific expressions of the identity of the asylum seeker can be understood as a manifestation of the freedom ideals in the romantic liberalism. This rather than a lack of skills and routine, as previous research has found. Furthermore, a discussion is held regarding that there is considerable tension between romantic liberalism and the universal claims of human rights. This particularly regarding the asylum seekers' limited ability or intention to live up to the freedom ideals of the romantic liberalism.

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The Internet is a ubiquitous feature in everyday life, but its application to social movements has yet to be completely understood. This phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of bloggers who focused on the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in the United States to understand the impact bloggers and their work as online activists have on existing LGBT social movement organization and operation. Data collection is gathered from semi-structured and open-ended interviews with four social movement bloggers using web-conference software over the course of three months. The results of this study indicated that internet has empowered individual activists, allowing them to gather a following and share their views to a large audience over the web, independent from existing social movement organizations. Consequently, bloggers and online activists maintain a relationship with existing social movement structure that is both collaborative and antagonistic. The results of this study contribute to the current understanding of social movement organizations as well as the impact of technological innovations on social movement advocacy.

Museums as colonial institutions and agents in nation building have constructed, circulated and reinforced colonialist, patriarchal, heteronormative and cisnormative national narratives. Yet, these institutions can be subverted, resisted and transformed into sites of critical public pedagogy especially when they invite Indigenous artists and curators to intervene critically. They are thus becoming important spaces for Indigenous counter-narratives, self-representation and resistance—and for settler education. My study inquired into Cree artist Kent Monkman’s commissioned touring exhibition Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience which offers a critical response to Canada’s celebration of its sesquicentennial. Narrated by Monkman’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, the exhibition tells the story of the past 150 years from an Indigenous perspective. Seeking to work on unsettling my “settler within” (Regan, 2010, p. 13) and contribute to understandings of the education needed for transforming Indigenous-settler relations, I visited and studied the exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. My study brings together exhibition analysis, to examine how the exhibition’s elements work together to produce meaning and experience, with autoethnography as a means to distance myself from the stance of expert analyst and allow for settler reflexivity and vulnerability. I developed a three-lens framework (narrative, representational and relational/embodied) for exhibition analysis which itself became unsettled. What I experienced is an exhibition that has at its core a holism that brings together head, heart, body and spirit pulled together by the thread of the exhibition’s powerful storytelling. I therefore contend that Monkman and Miss Chief create a decolonizing, truth-telling space which not only invites a questioning of hegemonic narratives but also operates as a potentially unsettling site of experiential learning. As my self-discovery approach illustrates, exhibitions such as Monkman’s can profoundly disrupt the Euro-Western epistemological space of the museum with more holistic, relational, storied public pedagogies. For me, this led to deeply unsettling experiences and new ways of knowing and learning. As for if, to what extent, or how the exhibition will unsettle other visitors, I can only speak of its pedagogical possibilities. My own learning as a settler and adult educator suggests that when museums invite Indigenous intervention, they create important possibilities for unsettling settler histories, identities, relationships, epistemologies and pedagogies. This can inform public pedagogy and adult education discourses in ways that encourage interrogating, unsettling and reorienting Eurocentric theories, methodologies and practices, even those we characterize as critical and transformative. Using the lens of my own unsettling, and engaging in a close reading of Monkman’s exhibition, I expand my understandings of pedagogy and thus my capacities to contribute to understandings of public pedagogical mechanisms, specifically in relation to unsettling exhibition pedagogies and as part of a growing conversation between critical adult education and museum studies. / Graduate

Fetischister är en sexuell minoritet vars sexualitet karaktäriseras av en inriktning mot någon sak, något annat än kön. Svensk lagstiftning kommunicerar en normerande bild av att endast sexualiteter riktade mot kön kan vara grundläggande och utgöra en persons sexuella läggning, övriga tillskrivs att vara sexuella beteenden med svaga konstitutiva kopplingar. I detta projekt undersöks något som inte undersökts kvantitativt tidigare; huruvida fetischisters egna upplevelser stämmer med lagstiftningens antaganden om gruppen. Eftersom lagstiftning är värderings- och tankenormerande och ytterst reglerar hur vi organiserar samhället är det högst angeläget att ta reda på hur det förhåller sig. Fetischisters upplevelser har fångats i en kvantitativ undersökning med 2028 respondenter. Resultaten av undersökningen har jämförts med fyra antaganden om fetischister som lagstiftningens förarbeten utgår från. Analysen pekar mot att: Fetischism kan vara såväl sexuellt som ickesexuellt och något som kan röra tankar, känslor och beteenden på ett konsistent sätt över tid. Att som lagstiftningen porträttera fetischism som ett strikt sexuellt beteende som ställs i kontrast till något personlighetsanstruket framstår därmed som otillräckligt. Denna undersökning synliggör att det finns en fetischistisk orientering, en fetischistisk sexuell preferens. Förarbetenas utgångspunkt att enbart könsinriktade sexualiteter har att göra med sexuell preferens är därmed en förenkling som framstår som felaktig. Undersökningen har visat att fetischism kan vara något grundläggande, stabilt, ej frivilligt valt och uppkommet i tidig ålder. Därmed stämmer inte förarbetenas antagande att dessa egenskaper är unika för sexualiteter riktade mot kön. Fetischistisk sexualitet har potential att vara en individs sexuella läggning då sexualiteten kan genomsyra sexuell praktik, identitet och preferens på ovan nämnda sätt. Därmed stämmer inte lagstiftningens bild av att enbart sexualiteter riktade mot kön kan vara sexuella läggningar. Den sammantagna analysen visar att fetischisters upplevelser inte stämmer med de antaganden om gruppen som lagstiftningen baseras på. Fetischism kan ligga till grund för flera olika situationer; både något som för en person kan utgöra ett svagare sexuellt intresse likväl som något som för en annan person kan vara grundläggande, såsom dennes sexuella läggning. Lagstiftningen återspeglar inte detta. / Fetishism refers to sexuality focused on a specific thing; an object, a body part or, in some cases, a more abstract phenomenon. Swedish law states that only sexualities focused on sex/gender can be considered fundamental to a person – in Sweden referred to as a person’s ”sexual disposition” or ”läggning”; roughly equivalent to ”primary sexual orientation”. Sexualities focused on anything other than sex/gender are considered sexual behaviours with weak constitutive connections. This research project examines quantitatively how the self-percieved experiences of fetishists compares to the assumptions about the group made in Swedish law texts. Data focused on the experiences of 2028 fetishists has been collected through an Internet survey 2019 – 2020, specifically targeting persons with a fetishistic sexuality in a sexological sense. The respondents identified as 74.7% men, 19.3% women and 6.0% other gender, with an average age of 41.4 years. The results from the survey indicates: Fetishism can have sexual as well as non-sexual aspects. Fetishism can influence thoughts, emotions and behaviours in an individual consistently over a very long period of time. The law’s depiction of fetishism as a strictly sexual behaviour that is discursively portrayed in contrast to personality appears to be inadequate. The results highlights a fetishistic sexual preference. The law’s assumption that only sex/gender focused sexualities can be relevant for a persons sexual preference or orientation consequently appears to be misleading. The results shows that fetishism can be constitutive to a persons sexuality: It can be a profound and enduring sexual pattern, not voluntarily chosen and emerging in early age. Consequently, the law’s assumptions that those properties are unique for sex/gender focused sexualities appears to be inaccurate. Fetishism has the potential to be an individual’s sexual disposition (primary sexual orientation), as it can characterize an individual’s sexual practice, identity and preference in a constitutive way. Consequently, the law’s definition of sexual disposition (primary sexual orientation) as only being relevant to sexualities focused on sex/gender appears to be false. The research indicates that the Swedish law’s assumption about fetishism does not correspond with the self-perception of fetishists themselves. The result suggests that fetishism is a heterogenous sexuality, which for some fetishists can consist of a less constitutive sexual interest, while it in others can be a more fundamental sexual disposition (primary sexual orientation).

This thesis analyzes how compulsory heterosexuality is present in Polish legislation on women* and trans* people’s reproductive and sexual rights. The aim of this study is to increase an understanding of how compulsory heterosexuality’s presence in legislation regarding reproductive and sexual rights can consequently affect women* and trans* people in practice. By the means of qualitative content analysis and the operationalization of compulsory heterosexuality through the lens of queer feminism, this thesis analyzes three Polish legislations on reproductive and sexual rights, namely the Constitution of Poland, the Family Planning, Human Embryo Protection and Conditions of Permissibility of Abortion Act, and the Family and Guardianship Code. Adrienne Rich’s theory of compulsory heterosexuality suggests that heterosexuality is not natural, but a violent institution enforced in society through e.g. law. This thesis found that compulsory heterosexuality was present in all three legislations, and presented itself through: erasure of women* and trans* people, denial of their sexuality, idealization of heterosexuality, rape and violence, control of their bodies, robbing of their children, punishment for being LGBTQIA+, diminishing their aspirations, restricting their self-fulfillment to parenthood and marriage, keeping them from seeking reproductive care, erasure of their traditions, objectification, and dismissive language. Possible consequences identified were: invalidation and invisibilization of queer and trans* people, increased oppression, the social norm being a negative bias against LGBTQIA+ people, criminalization of LGBTQIA+ people, more deaths at the hands of the law, more parentless children, making women* and trans* people question their body or intuition, and an increase in illegal unsafe abortions or abortion tourism.