COST Action IS0803 Workgroups 2010
WS3: Gender and Sexuality
Border Transgressions of Gender and Sexuality
Second Workshop 3 meeting
Central European University
Budapest (Hungary)
5-6 November 2009
Convenors:
Elissa Helms with Allaine Cerwonka and Hadley Renkin
Helmse@ceu.hu
+36-1-327-3000
The WS3 2010 summary report is now available.
Description:
In recent years, there have been numerous debates within studies of gender and sexuality about transgender and transsexual, issues that fundamentally involve studies of conceptual border-crossing. At the same time, within border studies, there have been numerous debates about the way moral, social, and political debates about gender and sexuality have been transgressing borders in a variety of ways. This has been particularly the case in the eastern periphery of Europe, where diverse understandings of gendered and sexual relations have led to numerous and often heated debates about moral, social and political characteristics of such relations. For a
prominent example, we need look no further than recent controversies accompanying violence and threats of violence at gay pride events in several countries on the eastern borders of Europe and the various issues that have emerged from such debates and incidents.
Following on from the first meeting of WS3, which considered the intersection of gender and sexuality at borders, both concrete and conceptual, this second meeting will focus on transgressions of dominant narratives and practices of gender and sexuality in relation to borders and other sorts of ‘crossings.’ We will explore how various understandings of gender and sexuality have been travelling across material and conceptual, 
political and social borders, and how shifting political conditions and debates about identity categories, values and morals are implicated in this travel and crossing. Here we have in mind debates about ethnic, racial and national identity;
legal measures; material and bureaucratic aspects of moving across borders; as well as the physical processes of transgressing the boundaries of gender and sex. Contributions are invited not only on the experiences of people who feel themselves to be at the edges of gender and national borders (e.g. LGBTQ or those associated with non-normative sexual or gender identities), but also on those who identify or are identified with dominant gender and sex categories. Contributions are also invited on the travel of concepts across borders, of transnational life and thought in the area of gender and sexuality, and on sexual and gendered imaginaries of the national at the eastern peripheries of Europe.
Image: Budapest Pride March (July 2007)
Photographer: Hadley Renkin
Participant: Allaine Cerwonka
Department of Gender StudiesCentral
European University
Hungary
Email: cerwonkaa@ceu.hu
Participant: Jeanette Edwards
Social Anthropology, School of Social Sciences
University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Email: jeanette.edwards@manchester.ac.uk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
I would like to develop the themes explored in WG4 (above) in this workshop. The paper would pay closer attention to the gendered aspects of the bodies and bodily substances that cross borders in the service of biotechnology. The paper will begin to explore the resonances and differences between IVF, for example, and cosmetic surgery. And will make a start at tracking some of the common pathways of ova, as well as the different ways in which they are procured and valued. In Norway, for instance, egg donation is not allowed; in Britain, it is allowed but not for profit; and in Spain ova donation is permitted and clinics and individuals can advertise publicly for ova - specifying, for example, a desire for young and intelligent donors - importantly they can also offer remuneration. Women from the UK and Norway, (and elsewhere) travel to Spain (and elsewhere) for fertility treatment. Such 'medical migrations' pose a dilemma for feminist perspectives that foreground 'choice'.
Participant: Magdalena Elchinova
Department of Anthropology
New Bulgarian University
Bulgaria
Email: melchinova@hotmail.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Crossing the State Border, Coping with Contradictory Gender Regimes: Bulgarian-born Turkish Women, Migrants in Turkey
In this presentation, I will discuss the case of the Bulgarian-born Turks, settlers or migrants in Turkey since 1989, focusing on the gender aspect. On the one hand, I will describe the economic and social adaptation of the female migrants across the Bulgarian-Turkish border. On the other hand, I will discuss how gender has become the key concept through which migrants’ identities are re-assessed and redefined in the society of arrival. In 1989, Bulgaria’s Turks massively fled from Bulgaria to Turkey, thus crossing the border between two conflicting states and two antagonistic ideologies. They entered a country, where they were welcomed as ‘ethnic kin’, only to face soon another form of differentiation and exclusion, based on the discrepancy between gender regimes in the society of origin and the host society. In the years after 1989, migration from Bulgaria to Turkey has continued, this time driven by economic forces and the exclusion of the labour migrants by local Turks on the grounds of different understanding of gender roles and patterns has become even sharper. I will discuss how migrant Turkish women from Bulgaria try to balance between their image of ‘impure women’ in the host society and bread winners in the family.
Participant: Antke Engel
Institute for Queer Theory
Germany
Email: engel@queer-institut.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Queer Re-articulations of Desire Travelling in Images: Zanele Muholi’s Photographic Challenges of Black Lesbian Sexuality
In my paper I will think about the role of desire in border crossings, particularly referring to Elspeth Probyn’s queer re-articulations of desire. I will enhance these considerations by reading one or two visual art works by Zanele Muholi, a South African artist working in photography and also doing what she calls “visual activism”. In my contribution I would like to argue that transgressions of boundaries and dominant narratives characteristic of her work could best be understood by referring to Probyn’s concept of “desire travelling in images” or “images transporting desire”. Yet, it is important to note that “the image” here is not a bounded entity, but a process of signification that depends on reading practices, conditions of production, mediality, and socio-discursive context intrinsic to the image. Muholi creates images of black lesbian embodied subjectivities that challenge racist, sexist, and heteronormative stereotypes exactly by not pretending to be authentic representations of Black Lesbian life in post-Apartheid South Africa. Rather, Muholi’s art works stage border
crossings inspired by queerings of desire by making use of their own status as images, and artistically reflecting on their mediality.
Participant: Haldis Haukanes
Education and Health Promotion
University of Bergen
Norway
Email: Haldis.Haukanes@iuh.uib.no
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Conformity and transgression in career dreams among “global” youth
The paper discusses gender conformity and transgression in young people’s narratives about their future lives, with particular focus on their preferences regarding education and work. Based on a comparative research on youth, globalization and gendered identities in the Czech Republic, Norway and Tunisia, the paper outlines emerging patterns of transgression in the youth’s narratives and traces possible influences from global mass media/youth culture on the youth’s wishes for their future gendered careers. The comparative examination reveals some cross-country similarities in the youths’ articulation of their preferences, for example in the rareness of “male-to-female” transgressions and the greater costs that seem to be involved in such a move. It does, however, also demonstrate striking regional variation in particular with regards to the girls’ articulation of their career plans and dreams, where the Tunisian girls stand out at those expressing the most transgressive future plans.
Participant: Elissa Helmes
Department of Gender Studies
Central European University
Hungary
Email: Helmse@ceu.hu
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Convenor WS3 2010
Participant: Madeleine Hurd
History Department
Södertörn University
Sweden
Email: Madeleine.hurd@sh.se
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Gendering the other: contrasting masculinities on the other side of the border.
National stereotypes, particularly of the people on the other side of a contested border, include gendered stereotypes - an array of idealized, ridiculous, or malevolent masculinities and femininities, to be invoked in various contexts and at various times. How do such projected gender roles interrelate with ideas of "race", culture, religion and class? This study looks at, and compares, the constructions advanced in the public debate at two German borders - that towards Poland, and that towards Denmark - during the interwar period. I use media, political speeches and propaganda pictures during the explosive years of 1918-21, in order to explore the ways in which gendered descriptions of the other on the other side of the border - the (so to speak) enemy male and enemy female - were developed, amended and deployed, in the struggle to claim that the border should run here - and not there.
Participant: Sanja Kajinic
Gender Studies Department
Central European University
Hungary
Email: sanreve@yahoo.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Discussant: I am particularly interested in sexuality/gender/border debates that can be related to my phd research which consists of ethnographic research of the queer visual arts festivals in the countries of former Yugoslavia - to the practices and strategies of crossing of borders by queer art work, artists, organizers and audiences of the queer festivals, and the complex negotiations that those entail.
Participant: Anna Loufti
Department of Gender Studies
Central European University
Hungary
Email: loutfia@ceu.hu
Participant: Aija Lulle
Centre for Science and Technology Studies
Latvian Academy of Science
Latvia
Email: aija@lza.lv; aija.lulle@lu.lv
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Crossing the borders in high-heeled shoes
This paper will be based on (1) transnational families, distant romantic relations, disruption or formation of family ties during migration or (2) the perception of “beauty” and beautiful women in particular. How is it perceived in post-soviet Latvia and how does it change when people cross borders? How does the migration experience shape the perception, and how does the migration experience change the self perception, self-worth in this sense?
Participant: Tuija Pulkkinen
Christina Institute for Women’s Studies
University of Helsinki
Finland
Email: tuija.pulkkinen@helsinki.fi
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Convenor WS3 2009
Participant: Korana Radman
Faculty of philosophy
University of Zagreb
Croatia
Email: korana.radman@gmail.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Queering Europe? The Case of 2007 Eurovision Song Contest
The article aims to explore intersections between the ideas of Europe promoted through Eurovision Song Contest, deeply embedded in classic traditions of chansons in festivals such as Sanremo music festival, and a very specific and for many very controversial 2007 edition of the Contest. The 52nd Contest was filled with performances, by many characterised and recognised as queer, which culminated with the victory of Serbian candidate, Marija Serifovic, whose performance accentuated her supposedly homosexual identity. Taking this 52nd edition of Eurovision as a case study, of otherwise very traditional and somewhat conservative festival, the goal of research will be the analysis of performances in the finale of the Contest, but also try to show how the Contest was perceived in the various media. Having borders in mind when talking about Eurovision Song Contest, if we can consider it as an attempt to (re)connect European countries through the sphere of popular culture, we will try to inquire if this as I argue here, "queer twist" to 52nd edition of the Contest, can be
interpreted as a call for a more queer European identity.
Participant: Hadley Z. Renkin
Department of Gender Studies
Central European University
Hungary
Email: renkinh@ceu.hu
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Discussant
Participant: Michaela Schäuble
Institute for Social Anthroplogy
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Germany
Email: michaela.schaeuble@ethnologie.uni-halle.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
A Filmic Investigation into the Correlation between Trafficking and International “Peacekeeping Mission“ in the Balkans
“Die Helfer und Die Frauen” (“The Peacekeepers and the Women”) is a documentary film directed by Karin Jurschick in 2003 that exposes the structures of trafficking and (forced) prostitution in its correlation with international “peacekeeping missions.” One of the disturbing repercussions of the presence of NATO-led forces such as KFOR, SFOR and various relief organisations in the post-war regions of the former Yugoslavia has been a considerable increase of trafficking across the borders to neighbouring states (i.e. Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, etc.). As a result, the forcible abduction of women and girls or their recruitment under false pretences into coerced prostitution has become a flourishing shadow economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina and especially in Kosovo. My contribution to the workshop will comment on these nexuses in relation to Jurschick’s filmic investigation of the topic. This will not draw directly on my own research, but in written form it could, for example, comprise a review essay about the film with reference to related research on the region (i.e. Friman & Reich 2007, etc.).
Participant: Meri Stojanova
NI, Institute and Museum
FYR Macedonia
Email: etno_m@yahoo.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
In the process of seeking a better life conditions people sometimes undertake various steps. Often they can be connected to borders viewed from political, geographic, ethnic as well as social aspect. In the case of the borders as political term this events are even more obvious. If we take the example of Macedonia and Albania we can see how the process of intermarriages was influenced by the fall of the political border between these countries. The interconnection between political and social aspect of life, changed the observation of the people from rural areas thus influencing sometimes changes even in the cultural or ethnic identity. The cross-border mobility of the female population from Albania is one-way migration and it is almost always connected to the better economic conditions in Macedonia. On the other hand traditional background of the mail population in Macedonia is additional factor that strengths these cross-border mobility. But how is the buying of the bride perceived by the wider communities?
Participant: Larissa Titarenko
Department of Sociology
Belarus State University
Republic of Belarus
Email: larisa166@hotmail.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Perception of non-normative gender and sexual identities by the people with normative sexual and gender identities
The paper proposal is based on the observation and interviews with the students in several countries in Eastern periphery (Belarus, Lithuania, Poland). In the most cases, it was a confidential information given not for public purposes, therefore, it was not officially declared; rather, people expressed their inner attitudes toward sexuality and gender. The author conceptualized this information, so that some differences in gender practices and especially in perception of non-normative gender and sexual identities among the people of normative gender and sexual identities have been discovered.
Unlike some expectations that sexual tolerance should be sufficient in the EU countries, research data shows that in these eastern peripheries tolerance to non-normative gender and sexual identities is rather low and does not differ from the level of tolerance in non-EU Belarus. In practice people may try to be neutral, sometimes they are curious about "transgressing the borders"; in private they actively debate such practices and express their rejection of non-traditional sexual practices on the basis of moral and social arguments. So, “crossing the border” in sexual and gender issues in the eastern periphery is not so easy as it might be viewed from the West. Dominant narratives are rather strong and backed by the traditional morality and culture.
Participant: Joni Virkkunen
Karelian Institute
University of Joensuu
Finland
Email: joni.virkkunen@joensuu.fi
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Purity and the Immoral West in post-Soviet Russian Sexuality Discourse
In Russia, the social system opened to new influences in terms of liberalisation, ICT and somewhat borderless Internet, as well as increased number of border-crossings. Sexuality related issues liberalised and led to sexual experiments and to a rise of various non-hegemonic forms of sexualities i.e. emerging gay movement. During the last few years, the strengthening Russian nationalism has activated diverse groups of activists to promote “real” Russianness and to fight against emerging immorality and “pervert lifestyle” that are – in Russian discourse – often said to have its roots in outside, in the West. The paper looks at the above-described "abjected" (Butler 1993) elements of sexuality in a context of Russian nationalism through two opposing narratives: gay pride as a symbol and expression of freedom, constitutional
rights and democracy, and gay pride as satanic manifestation of sodomy, spread of AIDS, and the Western immorality. These are central arguments for / against homosexuality and, significantly, deeply social claims on which direction Russian society should or should not develop. The violent riots and clashes between nationalists and gay political activists (including foreign MEPs), yet, well illustrate both visions and fears, as well as national-territorial imaginations on Russian sexuality. It is these that the proposed paper will study in greater detail.
Participant: Serge Weber
Social Sciences
Université Paris-Est, Marne-la-Vallée
France
Email: serge.weber@gmail.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Italian invest, Romanian help: the mechanisms of migration and capital mobility in an enlarged EU
Since Italy has become a major migration destination for romanian migrants, Italian employers have securized their investments in CEEC countries like Romania. Italian industrial districts entrepreneurs sharpen their outsourcing activities towards origin coutries of their migrant employees, standing on the trust and loyalty ties they create with them. Gambino and Sachetto described one of these outsourced district as "Trevisoara" between Treviso and Timisoara. Such strategies can also be observed in Poland or in Ukraine. The specific issues of such a process are : the gendered aspect of instrumentalization of ethnic differences (intermediates are mostly women, investors men); and the men-community aspect of a new type of italian diaspora. Foucault's point on "spirals of power" is confirmed in a capital, ethnic and gendered dimension, which is somewhere else presented as "co-development" or "european integration".