This paper examines the Church of Sweden’s changing approach to same-sex marriage from a queer theoretical and queer theological perspective. A discourse analytical method examines the previous discourse and how it has come to change over time. The analysis takes place among the statements that priests, bishops, and other theologians have expressed in the public debate, the Church’s theological committee and the church meetings that take place every year. The study also addresses the changes and explanations of the new Church Handbook based on a theological statement. The queer theoretical basis is based on Michel Foucault and Judith Butler's foundations for the theory and culminates in two explanatory models. The study's stated aim of investigating the Discourse of the Church of Sweden also lands in how the Swedish Church responds to National Socialist and value conservative forces in society such as the Sweden Democrats.The Church of Sweden’s policy to flag with the rainbow flag and meet homophobic expressions in both the society as in its own ranks.

The theme of this bachelor thesis was Queer Games. We discussed how queerness is applied in video games for queer people. We made some observations on how LGBTQ characters were represented within a few games that had representations of Queer experiences. We explored the topic of Queer Mechanics as presented by game creator Avery Mcdaldno (2014) and we researched discussions about Queerness in games by a select number of scholars. Namely, Bonnie Ruberg (Campus Gotland GAME, 2017), Naomi Clark (2017, Chapter 1) and Edmond. Y. Chang (2017, Chapter 2). We explained why we used Gay Memes as our anchoring topic for our Queer Game design and then we went through the methods and design process that we had while developing our Queer Game. These methods included Innovation By Boundary Shifting (Löwgren and Stolterman, 2004), Design Pillars (Max Pears, 2017) and The Crystal Clear method (New Line Technologies, 2018). Then, we broke down the design process starting with how we came up with the game concept, what design pillars we used and the programs and tools we used in the development of the game. We also explained the relation between our design process and the information we learned from the previously mentioned scholars and creators. At the end of this bachelor thesis, we discussed the effectiveness of the chosen methods, the results we found through research which included questioning the role of empathy and fun in games, putting less focus on superficial forms of representation and creating game mechanics that are queer. We described the finished video game we made and we introduced our ideas for future research on Queer Game Design. / Temat för detta kandidatarbetet var Queer Spel. Vi diskuterade hur queerhet appliceras i digitala spel för HBTQ personer. Vi gjorde några observeringar kring hur HBTQ karaktärer representerades inom några spel som innehöll representationer av queer upplevelser. Vi undersökte ämnet “Queer Mechanics” som presenterades av spelskaparen Avery Mcdaldno (2014) och undersökte diskussioner från vissa forskare om Queerhet i Spel. Nämligen, Bonnie Ruberg (Campus Gotland GAME, 2017), Naomi Clark (2017, Kapitel 1) and Edmond. Y. Chang (2017, Kapitel 2). Vi förklarade varför vi använde “Gay Memes” som vår huvudämne för vår Queer-Spelgestaltning och sedan tydliggjorde våra metoder och designprocess som vi hade under utvecklingen av vår Queer-Spelgestaltning. Dessa metoder inkluderade Innovation By Boundary Shifting (Löwgren and Stolterman, 2004), Design Pillars (Max Pears, 2017) och The Crystal Clear method (New Line Technologies, 2018). Sedan bröt vi ner designprocessen till sina olika steg från hur vi kom fram till spelkonceptet till vilka “Design Pillars” vi använde och vilka datorprogram och verktyg vi använde för att utveckla spelgestaltningen. Vi förklarade också relationen mellan designprocessen och informationen vi lärde oss från de sistnämnda forskare och spelskapare. I slutet av detta kandidatarbetet diskuterade vi hur bra de valda metoderna fungerade och resultaten vi hittade genom vår undersökning. Dessa inkluderade att ifrågasätta rollen av empati och vikten av att ha roligt i spel, att lägga mindre fokus på ytliga former av representation och att skapa spelmekanik som är Queer. Vi beskrev den färdiga spelgestaltningen som vi skapade och introducerade våra egna idéer för framtida undersökningar om Queer Speldesign. / <p>Arbetets resultat ledde till ett digitalt spel som kan laddas ner via denna länken https://ahmad-al-shehabi.itch.io/boyles-queer-quest-for-tea </p>

<p>This project investigates the network structure and political importance of the popular Appalachian culture and politics page @queerappalachia. Promising users a feed filled with “community.content.culture,” @queerappalachia serves as a digital hub for anyone interested in queer perspectives on Appalachian politics and culture, regardless of their geographic location. The page’s over 3,000 posts include memes about Appalachian culture; celebrations of queer rurality (#saturdaynightinthecountry, #ruralresistance); references to big trucks, Mountain Dew, and The Trailer Park Boys; posts about opioid addiction, needle exchanges, and #harmreduction; jokes about communism and anarchism; calls for establishing #mutualaid drives; and signal boosts which highlight ongoing activist efforts in the region, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline protests and the Kentucky miner’s strikes. The page’s recalcitrant and anti-establishment content has attracted a surprisingly large following of around 230,000. But what does this expansive online network mean for Appalachian and Southern queer people?</p> <p>Rural queer people often have limited access to offline political organizing due to their geographic location, but online political communities may be a way of increasing rural political engagement. However, the usefulness of social networking sites like Instagram for political organizing is contested. To better understand what @queerappalachia is and how it is being used, I have created a multidimensional network of the page, mapping how users interact with posts, hashtags, and each other. In particular, this study provides evidence for how the collective action concepts of “brokerage,” “diffusion,” “identification,” and “deliberation” are being organized and enacted within the @queerappalachia community. I have also conducted interviews with followers of @queerappalachia who have been identified as central by the network study. The interviews provide evidence of how people within the @queerappalachia network conceptualize their political identities in relation to the page and how users utilize the affordances of Instagram communities for political action. </p>

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Ce mémoire porte sur la représentation et la fétichisation des femmes trans dans les médias audiovisuels. Cette étude décrit tout d’abord l’évolution de la représentation trans-féminine des années 1950 aux années récentes. Les femmes trans racisées sont pour ainsi dire invisibles lors des premières décennies. Le mémoire distingue la représentation anti-assimilationniste de la représentation intégrationniste. Le film Paris Is Burning (1991, Livingston) apporte un changement à cet effet et présente une nouvelle réalité dans les médias. L’influence du documentaire du Nouveau Cinéma Queer est encore majeure. Près de trente ans plus tard, la série télévisée Pose (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Steven Canals, FX, 2018-2021) rend hommage au film de la réalisatrice Jennie Livingston. Le mémoire se penche sur la théorie féministe, intersectionnelle et queer des années 1990 afin de comprendre l’évolution de ces études. Cette analyse interroge la remise en question des rôles de genre et l’impact de la performance et de la performativité dans les images médiatiques trans. / This master's thesis focuses on the representation and fetishization of trans women of color in audiovisual media. This study first describes the evolution of trans-feminine representation from the 1950s to recent years. Trans women of color were virtually invisible in the early decades. The thesis distinguishes anti-assimilationist representation from integrationist representation. The film Paris Is Burning (1991, Livingston) announces a change and a new reality in media. The impact of the New Queer Cinema documentary is still significant to this day. The television series Pose (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Steven Canals, FX, 2018-2021) pays homage to director Jennie Livingston's film almost thirty years later. The thesis examines the feminist, intersectional and queer theory of the 1990s to understand these studies' evolution. This analysis questions the subversion of gender roles and the impact of performance and performativity in trans* media images.

Purpose LGBTQ patients experience marginalization and discrimination when seeking healthcare in the Southern Region of the United States. As a result, they experience negative healthcare outcomes. Collecting sexual orientation/gender identity (SOGI data) is vital in decreasing health disparities and improving hospitalized LGBTQ patients’ quality of care. Providers cannot adequately assess health risk factors or deliver culturally competent care without SOGI data knowledge. Aims The aim is to collect SOGI data during intake to implement a standard of care to promote LGBTQ health outcomes and decrease marginalization. Processes To understand how to provide high-quality care to LGBTQ patients, providers receive instruction on the importance of collecting SOGI data and cultural competency training using the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) guideline. After IRB determined the project as not research involving human subjects, SOGI data questions (your current gender identity is and describe your sexual orientation) were added to the EHR demographic health history section. Provider adoption of collecting SOGI data is measured by extracting data from the EHR. Results Results will determine the providers’ responsiveness to implementing SOGI data questions into the EHR. Limitations Provider having a choice of collecting SOGI data, the small sample size of providers, and the project’s location are limitations. Conclusions LGBTQ individuals have more health inequities and face marginalization when accessing healthcare. SOGI data collection is essential for assessing health risk factors, improving health outcomes, and creating a safe and inclusive healthcare environment for LGBTQ patients.

The goal of this dissertation was to explore aging lesbian and gay individuals living in rural communities, in terms of their social networks and the relationships between these networks, identity, health, and quality of life. Guiding the study were three overarching questions. Using a multi-method design, the research was grounded within a socio-ecological context and focused on how structural systems create pathways for health and are affected by social position (intersectionality). Participants (n=25) were recruited from Kentucky (n=20), West Virginia (n=3), and Tennessee (n=2). Thirteen participants self-identified as gay and twelve as lesbian. Findings highlight the complexity of the aging experience and the difficulty in parsing out the influence of a rural location, the aging process, and being a lesbian or gay male, on social network development, identity, health, and quality of life. Findings indicate that rural gay and lesbian individuals develop networks based on need with limited consideration for network members’ acceptance of their identity. The findings also indicate that networks are primarily composed of heterosexual members. Social isolation and loneliness remain a pervasive issue in the rural gay and lesbian aging community. Finally, network size does not affect the overall health and quality of life for rural aging lesbian and gay individuals, but identity congruence does. Conclusions point to the greater need for research to understand the factors affecting aging lesbian and gay individuals in rural environments. Opportunities abound for developing further research addressing social isolation among this population and exploring the positive relationship between identity congruence and quality of life. The findings highlight the collective need to continue research into sexual minority aging and rural sexual minority aging.

Although the social issue of intimate partner violence has come to receive increased attention in the social debate in recent decades, there are still different ideas regarding who is to be actually considered a victim of it. Intimate partner violence is often to be assumed as a phenomenon that occurs in heterosexual relationships only, leaving the abuse in homosexual relationships to be trivialized. This study seeks to fill the gap of knowledge about intimate violence in lesbian relationships together with the aim of shedding light on the existing support efforts, the prevailing heteronorm and its impact on our perception of intimate partner violence.    Using semi-structured interviews with professionals who meet women that has been a victim of violence in a lesbian relationship we wanted to investigate in what ways their approach against the target group is affected by the professionals prior knowledge and the general heteronorm in our society. Furthermore, the purpose is also to investigate whether these factors may in turn influence how the support efforts for this target group are designed. The results of this study showed that the professionals do not always have sufficient adequate knowledge of the potential needs of the target group, which in turn may affect the support available to women who have been subjected to violence. Furthermore, the result is presented based on connections to previous knowledge and the theories Social Constructivism and Gender Theory. These theoretical perspectives were used in order to inherit a critical approach to norms and structures in the society, and through different concepts gain a deeper understanding of how different norms can become established in our society. / Även om samhällsproblemet våld i nära relation har kommit att få en ökad uppmärksamhet i samhällsdebatten under de senaste decennierna råder det fortfarande skilda föreställningar kring vem som faktiskt anses vara offer för det. Ofta antas våld i nära relationer vara ett fenomen som enbart inträffar i heterosexuella förhållanden, vilket gör att våldet i homosexuella relationer bagatelliseras och osynliggörs. Denna studie syftar till att fylla kunskapsluckan om våld i nära lesbiska relationer tillsammans med syftet att belysa befintliga stödinsatser, den allmänna heteronormen och dess påverkan på uppfattningen om våld i nära relationer.   Med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer med yrkesverksamma som möter kvinnor som har blivit utsatta för våld i lesbiska relationer ville vi undersöka på vilket sätt bemötande av denna målgrupp påverkas av yrkesverksammas förkunskaper samt den allmänna heteronormen i vårt samhälle. Vidare är syftet även att undersöka om dessa faktorer i sin tur kan komma att påverka hur stödinsatserna för denna målgrupp utformas. Resultaten av denna studie visade på att de yrkesverksamma inte alltid har tillräcklig adekvat kunskap om målgruppens eventuella behov, vilket i sin tur kan påverka vilket stöd som finns att erbjuda kvinnor som har blivit utsatta för våld. Vidare presenteras resultatet baserat på kopplingar till tidigare kunskap och teorierna Socialkonstruktivism och Queerteorin. Dessa teoretiska perspektiv användes för att erhålla en kritisk inställning till normer och strukturer i samhället, och genom olika begrepp få en djupare förståelse för hur olika normer kan etableras i vårt samhälle.

By using a poststructural discourse analysis, this study aims to investigate how the Swedish Armed Forces formulates the preventive work against discrimination due to sexual orientation and transgender identity or expression. The aim is to also bring knowledge of how the preventive work affect the work environment and the possible consequences for LGBTQ-people within the organisation.  The method “What’s the problem represented to be” by Carol Bacchi is used to analyse the chosen material of policies and qualitative interviews to find out what shapes the preventive work, how it has come about and the effects on different groups in the organisation. Theoretical concepts as hegemonic masculinity, queer, heteronormativity, peripheral inclusion and homonationalism is used as theoretical frame and applied throughout the method. This study shows preventive work tend to focus on Pride and attitudes, rather than questioning structures within the organisation. As result, the heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity within the organisation is not disrupted and LGB-people in the organisation still perceive homophobic tendencies as part of the work environment.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), as it would later be known, began to appear in the United States in 1981. Medical professionals from around the country began to track a mysterious set of illnesses that were affecting previously healthy people, most of who were homosexual men. As the disease spread, it was clear that homosexual men were being most affected. There was no cure to this illness which was quickly killing those infected. In October 1981, the Indianapolis Bag Ladies, a group of gay men, began as a simple Halloween Bus Tour around the city. Coby Palmer, Gary Johnson, and Ed Walsh teamed up by renting three charter busses for their new “Bag Ladies Bus.” Their campy drag involved multiple costume changes that required them to tote bags around, thus earning their name. By 1982, the Bag Ladies knew they needed to do more than have a party. The second bus tour was all about collecting money and creating a “war chest” for the gay community of Indianapolis in case AIDS made its way to the city. In doing this, they became one of the first grassroots HIV/AIDS support groups in the United States. After over 38 years of continued efforts, the Indianapolis Bag Ladies have impacted the Indianapolis LGBTQ communities through a variety of programs that expanded beyond the original bus tour. This thesis explores and analyzes these efforts which include Nurse Safe Sexx, a safe sex campaign; the Damien Center, a HIV/AIDS health clinic; and the Buddy House and Buddy Support Program, two programs connecting people with AIDS to support programs. The final chapter of this thesis expands on the discussion through a public program hosted by the Indiana Historical Society and demonstrates how programs surrounding these topics can be successful for museums and participants.