Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of South Australia, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 1, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study examined how gay men construct a gay identity and have relationships within a heteronormative (Kritzinger, 2005) society in South Africa. The impact of this study is that homophobia continues to persist within different levels of society despite progressive legislation (Republic of South Africa, 1998; Republic of South Africa, 2006; Republic of South Africa, 2007), that gender binarisms persist in gay relationships, that power differences impact and shape gay relationships, and that resistance and transgression to heteronormativity were present in some of the narratives. The qualitative study employed a semi-structured guide with in-depth interviews. Sampling procedures that were utilised were snowball sampling in a non-probability sample. Data was collected via an MP3 player and each interview was transcribed and analysed using content and narrative analysis. I-poems using the listening guide (Gilligan et al, 2003) were constructed in six of the narratives. The sample distribution included 15 gay men aged between 20 to 46 years. Of these, 12 participants were black (6 coloured, 3 Indians, 3 African) and 3 were white. / South Africa

Cities in Dust is a collection of 15 short stories and the first two chapters of Biggest Little City, a novel-in-progress. This collection looks at queerness, gender, sex work, addiction, illness, and the effects of displacement--leaving homes, cities, relationships, and theoretical safety before we are ready. Cities in Dust works to tell stories from the space between places and the moment between moments. Transition is a city of its own.

This dissertation explores contemporary literary representations of the Haitian Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986), by authors Nadine Magloire, Kettly Mars, Evelyne Trouillot, and Marie-Célie Agnant. The questions that I explore through my dissertation research are: How do these authors represent the instrumentalization of sex during this time, both as a weapon of oppression and a means of resistance? How might Haitian women view their potential for agency in the context of this regime? The theoretical approach to this dissertation combines scholarship on postcolonial feminism and sexuality studies in a Haitian context in order to understand the implications and dynamics of power imbalance, agency, and heteronormative discourse in the works in question. Within the field of Haitian studies, I consider the work of little-studied authors and question a tendency to focus on the 2010 earthquake as the defining break between current and past literature. Rather, I suggest that cyclical trauma--of which the Duvalier dictatorships represent an important period--constantly informs the aesthetics of Haitian literature. More broadly, I respond to questions of agency and subjectivity, and demonstrate how these authors experiment with sexuality as a way to simultaneously reclaim agency and delineate the limits of such agency. Ultimately, I argue that these authors create a sort of literary dialogue between Haiti and the diaspora. These women imagine strategies involving feminine geolibertinism, homosexuality, self-sacrifice, prostitution, and abstinence as means of surviving and coping with the legacy of the Duvalier era. In fact, I argue that writing gender and sexuality outside of heteronormativity is one way in which 21st-century female Haitian novelists remember the Duvalier regime and create a space for potential resistance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 27, 2015. / Duvalier, Gender, Haiti, Sexuality / Includes bibliographical references. / Martin Munro, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jerrilyn McGregory, University Representative; Lori Walters, Committee Member; Reinier Leushuis, Committee Member; José Gomariz, Committee Member.

At the crossroads of Italian studies; film studies; and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, my dissertation investigates a group of films by Italian women filmmakers whose narratives center on women and unfold in constrained spaces. Confinement is generally considered antithetical to feminist projects that imagine emancipation to be synonymous with freedom of movement. Why would women filmmakers, then, making films in the new millennium choose to stage their narratives in cloistered spaces? I find that the spatial restrictions are not responding to familiar dialectics. First feature films Benzina (Gasoline, Monica Stambrini 2001), Aprimi il cuore (Aprimi il cuore, Giada Colagrande 2002), and Via Castellana Bandiera (A Street in Palermo, Emma Dante 2013) find ways to place us snugly inside a familiar space, a space that comes with a standardized set of expectations and associations: the apartment with the nuclear family; Rome’s GRA (grande-raccordo anulare; Rome’s ring road) with travel around the capital; the narrow street as a classically Italian impasse. But when the films have us “overstay our welcome,” these spaces no longer align with our original understanding, instead, we begin to see the kinds of exclusions that have come to define those standardized narratives. And so, the films queer space, and by queering space we might come to see that the world we inhabit is much more dynamic than our traditional narratives might have us believe. I begin by analyzing the only documentary in my project, Vogliamo anche le rose (We Want Roses Too, Alina Marazzi, 2007). This film is a launching pad from which to establish a more robust backdrop of feminist history, philosophies, and concepts that re-emerge in subsequent chapters. Vis-à-vis the historiography I provide, I argue that each of the films’ restricted spatial configurations incite tense interpersonal dynamics within female pairings that dramatize both local and global political tensions within real feminist and lesbian collectives. Allusions to these long-lasting tensions in women’s political history provide not only an image of its past but also of its present, and perhaps its future. In other words, the films are a hard mirror to look into for feminist and lesbian activists and for women whose lives are affected by their (in)decisions, inclusions, and exclusions.

The 21st century has witnessed a radical change in the status of sexual minorities, the world over, with this change having a profound impact in the global North, in particular. A series of landmark United Nations, regional and national court decisions, inspired by the increasing effective lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual (LGBT) lobby, are progressively announcing the end of institutionalised discrimination which had been the lot of homosexual persons for centuries in many part of the world. However, while there has been a statutory shift towards the welcoming of homosexual persons in the West and in parts of Latin America, thus gradually recognising the injustice synonymous with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, African states remain less likely to respect homosexual persons' rights. The Nigerian LGBT experience exemplifies the regressive position in many African states. Not only have laws been enacted that criminalise homosexuality in Nigeria; existing laws have in 2014 been strengthened by newer, ever more stringent anti-homosexuality legislation. The most notable anti-homosexuality law is the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, (SSMPA) 2013, signed into law in January 2014 by then President Goodluck Jonathan. Unlike the anti-sodomy provisions in the criminal and penal codes inherited from the British colonial rulers and the provisions of the Sharia legal codes in operation in some of the states of northern Nigeria, the controversial SSMPA explicitly criminalises same-sex marriage and goes further by also criminalising broader categories of homosexual related conduct throughout the territory of Nigeria. This thesis argues that Nigerian laws criminalising consensual adult homosexual conduct prima facie violate the human rights provision of the Nigerian Constitution and Nigeria’s international law obligations. The thesis takes a holistic view of the major cultural, religious and moral arguments proposed by opponents of sexual minority rights in their efforts to justify the continued discrimination of homosexual persons and same-sex consensual sexual conduct in Nigeria. The study aims to contest the validity of these arguments by presenting a case for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in Nigeria through such instruments as judicial intervention, legislative enactment, executive action and sexual minorities’ rights activism. This study highlights the fact that people do not choose their sexual orientation and that consensual adult homosexual conduct is no more inherently harmful to others than heterosexual acts. Contrary to the widespread belief in Nigeria that consensual adult homosexual conduct is based on imported Western values, this study underlines that homosexuality has been an undeniable fact of human existence predating colonialism – also in what today is Nigeria. In this regard, by demonstrating the surprising tolerance toward homosexuals in pre-colonial Idomaland, this study further confirms the notion that consensual adult homosexual conduct is not a Western import. In the process, this study sheds new light on pre-colonial attitudes to homosexuality in Idomaland, North Central Nigeria, where no prior field research has been conducted. The study further discredits the religious objection to consensual adult homosexual conduct by adopting a contextual reading of Islam and Christianity, the two dominant religions in Nigeria, thus allowing for the co-existence of religious beliefs and the protection of sexual minorities. This study affirms that the moral objection to consensual adult homosexual acts fails for the very reason that such practices do not cause harm to either society or other individuals. This study fits Isaiah Berlin’s conception of liberty as individual autonomy into the argument for the liberalisation of Nigerian sexual minorities’ environment. The application of Berlin’s concept of negative liberty to the Nigerian homosexual environment supports the affirmation of sexual minority rights as fundamental human rights. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Centre for Human Rights / LLD / Unrestricted

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, also known as sexual minorities, endure unique and excess stressors due to their stigmatized sexual minority identity. Commonly referred to as minority stress, these stressors may potentially lead to poorer mental health outcomes among sexual minority individuals as compared to their heterosexual counterparts. The manifestation and extent of these stressors depend on the complex relationships between one’s simultaneous intersecting identities (e.g., race, gender, and sexual orientation) and macro-level inequality reinforcement (e.g., structural barriers, societal representation, politics). Inequality at the macro-level creates power and oppression on a larger scale by emphasizing dominant societal norms and belief systems, which, in turn, could have consequences on interpersonal and individual levels. Previous minority stress literature neglects macro-level impact and tends to view sexual minorities as a homogenous group. In an effort to highlight within-group variability of minority stressors and their impact on sexual minorities at the intersection of race and gender, an intersectional lens was applied to assess existing minority stress literature that corresponded with three types of intersectionality (i.e., structural intersectionality, representational intersectionality, political intersectionality). Sexual minority stress research, with emphasis on external stressors aligning with macro-level forces, was selected for review. After organizing the literature by race, gender, and specific sexual minority identity, an intersectional lens was applied to explain the variation of experience based on converging identity intersections of sexual minority individuals. The variation of mental health outcomes was also identified. Findings revealed that literature primarily lined-up with structural intersectionality, followed by representational intersectionality, and, finally, political intersectionality. Ideally, this review would have equally distributed information on all within-group identity combinations, but this review further highlights group underrepresentation in the literature. Consistencies emerged for bisexuals and sexual minorities of color (SMOC) across the structural, representational, and political intersectionality categorizations. Overall, bisexuals and SMOC appear to be at a more significant macro-level disadvantage than gay or lesbian individuals and White sexual minorities. A recognizable pattern occurred based on gender across race/ethnicity in relation to structural and representational intersectionality. The stressors for women and gender minorities occurred in the context of societal power, assumed heterosexuality, and healthcare. By contrast, stressors for men concerned geographic location, employment, workplace, and appearance. While very little minority stress literature corresponded with political intersectionality, this review highlighted a large gap in previous research and what to explore in the future. The findings highlight the similarities and differences encountered by sexual minorities related to experiences, stress, and mental health regarding macro-level impacts. Additionally, gaps in the minority stress literature were also revealed, such as underrepresented identities and political influence. In the future, incorporation of intersectionality that should be applied prior to conducting minority stress research for a more comprehensive understanding.

This dissertation explores the potential of the queer Muslim asylum seeker to confront the Dutch national imaginary. An archetype of homonationalism, the Netherlands faces rising tides of Islamophobia, waters which queer Muslims must learn to navigate. An asylum seeker’s success in the system depends on their “credibility”, hinging on the consistency of their self-representation which is constantly being reconstructed. These constant reconstructions, what Ewing (1990) refers to as “shifting selves”, are not conscious or noticed by the individual; yet, in the context of asylum claim-making, reconstitutions of the self may rise to the surface, asylum seekers then engaging in conscious strategizing. I analyze these contexts ethnographically through informal interviews and participant observation, at the height of the so-called “Refugee Crisis” of the mid-2010s in Europe. I find that as the figure of the queer Muslim asylum seeker confronts the Dutch national imaginary, it both confirms it—representing national commitments to human rights, to tolerance, and to protection of sexual minorities—and challenges it—embodying impossible identities, and evincing a failure of the nation to live up to its ideals: What is “tolerance” when it is weaponized against minority groups? What kind of queerness is being protected if deviation from a cultural norm is disqualifying? Whose human rights are being protected by a system that demands the subject of those rights conform to formulations inconsistent with lived experience?

Gender minorities and sexual minorities have been historically under researched in the field of psychology. This becomes more so the case when looking at the intersections of those who identify as both gender and sexual minorities. Prior research has indicated that minority stress models have been shown to be linked to disparities in mental health between sexual minorities and non-sexual minorities. This has also been shown to be true between gender minorities and cis gender individuals. Little research has ever been done to establish this model on those who fall within both minority groups and how these models may differ. The present study attempts to look at this intersection by comparing a mental health and minority stress model – comprised of anticipated discrimination, social support, and depression – for those identifying as a gender and sexual minority to those who identify as purely sexual minorities. In order to do this, participants (N = 315) were recruited from social media and were given a series of surveys. All participants identified as sexual minorities and 53% (n = 167) identified as Transgender or Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC). The cross-sectional, online quantitative study featured a battery of surveys that measured anticipated discrimination in both major and every day events, LGBT community connectedness, depression, and anxiety. A mediated moderated model and a series of t tests were performed to analyze the differences between sexual and gender minorities versus sexual minorities only. Results indicated that TGNC individuals had significantly higher levels of anticipated discrimination (M = 3.56, SD = .86 compared to M = 3.30, SD = .92), lower levels of social support (M = 4.66, SD = 1.26 compared to M = 5.20, SD = 1.24), and higher levels of depression (M = 31.81, SD = 12.97 compared to M = 25.32, SD = 12.80). Further, anticipated discrimination and fewer support resources explain the increase in depression for TGNC individuals (bootstrapped indirect effects = -.4111 SE = .1720 95%CI = -.8675, -.1634). Overall TGNC individuals showed to have worse experiences and outcomes than their gender conforming, cisgender peers. These results may suggest that future counselling methods for TGNC individuals could benefit by focusing on fostering social support through methods such as interpersonal psychotherapy.