Pia Laskar, gender studies, Linköping University

2007-2014

The project's purpose and potential modifications
The overall objective was to examine shifts in discussions about the conditions of citizenship and how these shifts have been articulated in discussions of gay-, bi- and transsexualities as human rights. The overarching question of the objective was broken down into three: in which contexts, by which actors and on which basic ideas have lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights (LGBT) as human rights been discussed?
Empirically, a slight shift has occurred. Initially the main material was downloaded from the internet, but online there is primarily a given organization or activist group's latest texts and news which made comparatives over time difficult. Instead, the study launched a process in which key actors that had worked in Sweden to highlight LGBT rights internationally were interviewed. These key actors were identified by the "snowball method", and through them the study led to the The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL) Federal Archive For Foreign Related Issues. To complement the archival material the study has examined RFSLs member magazine and the umbrella organization ILGAs newsletter (International Lesbian and Gay Association). ILGA is the body that has coordinated the various member organizations' work to implement homo/sexual rights transnationally, partly through campaigns directed towards certain states, and partly by working towards supranational authorities.

Results

1. One result concerns organization history. Previous scientific studies of RFSLs history stop in 1970, and the history since 1970 has been described sparingly, and by the activists themselves, in terms of a radicalization and ruptures of earlier homophile politics. The study shows instead continuity - both in terms of activists and the organizational transnational work and contacts.
2. Another result is that RFSL since its inception has been dependent on transnational cooperation and coordination in order to pursue questions about homo/sexual rights. Through this collaboration the activists' work has been able to reach into different political areas, both nationally and transnationally. One example is the demedicalisation of homosexuality in Sweden in 1979, and another is the equal lawful age for hetero - and homosexuality. Two results of transnational campaigns!
Furthermore, this study criticize the results of earlier research that states that it took until the 1990s before the umbrella organization ILGA (where RFSL was an active member) managed to conduct a targeted and coherent battle in the EU. In addition to that the EU obviously was not a political authority before the Maastricht Treaty data is presented showing that ILGA worked diligently and cohesive throughout the 1980s claiming sexual rights targeting the Council of Europe - the supranational European authority that was available for political demands before the EU in the 1990s.
3. A third result shows that RFSL in the early 1950s joined a transnational struggle for homo/sexual rights involving organizations and actors where male dominance was substantial and attention was put on changing "the white people's world." Politics was influenced by the racial thinking of the time, which distinguishes the early 1950s homophilic transnationalism from a more recent homo-transnationalism, which preferred to bring attention to cultural differences.
 

New research questions generated by the project

The project has been confronted with various challenges. One is concerning the perceptions of Europe and the West as the hub for democracy, modernity and human rights, and to avoid replicating such a story, the study has highlighted colonial tendencies and decolonising practitioners. These challenges resulted in that the project was involved in the conference "Conference on Feminist Research Methods", and there contributed to set up a keypanel and five sidesessions on queer and methodological issues. The work resulted in an international special issue on queer methodologies in Lambda Nordica.
The methodological issues have deepened during the research. One issue that has been generated concerns social movements dichotomous images of the West and rest and another is tied to the Swedish national self-perception. During the spring of 2013 the project presented questions about sexual rights related to modernity at a conference panel together with researchers with a transnational focus on social movements. The project has, together with other members of the panel, started a new research group collaborating on these issues, partly by working on a special issue of the journal Cultural Unbound, and partly by designing a new research programme.
Another new issue connects the projects concept homo-transnationalism to anti-Muslim movements in Sweden. The topic was presented at a conference where the projects own concept "homotransnationalism" was discussed. This part of the study's development of concepts and theorieshas generated new questions and led to the involvement in designing a project within a larger programme on anti-Muslim discourses in the Nordic countries - a programme involving researchers from multiple disciplines and universities.
Research informative efforts outside the scientific community
The project has been presented or participated in panel discussions, debates, and public lectures organized by folk high schools, adult education associations or sexual-political organizations and one of the public popular science lectures has been recorded by The Swedish National Public TV (SVT) and broadcasted by the Knowledge Channel (Kunskapskanalen).

The project's publishing strategy

The strategy reflects the project's accumulated expertise and is aimed both at an international and national readership. As RJ prefers publication in open-access format a strategy was chosen that focused this. Currently two articles have been peer reviewed, one is published and the other one has been accepted, both in open-access publications. A third article has been submitted to an open-access publication. The monograph is aimed at a wider audience through a commercial publisher. Research results have also been published in cultural journals and been presented in various public knowledge contexts and research seminars at seven different universities in Sweden and abroad.
The project's international bounds
The project has been presented and discussed at international conferences, seminars and symposia:
Feminist Research Methods Conference, Stockholm University, February 5-7, 2009,
5th Feminist Research Conference, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, June 4-6, 2009.
GEXcel/Gendering Excellence, Theme 4-5: Sexual health, embodiment and empowerment. Bridging epistemological gaps, Linköping University, June 15-17, 2009.
Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Presentation and seminar, March 30, 2012, Istanbul, Turkey.
Thought as Action: Gender; Democracy; Freedom conference, University of Bergen, Norway, August 16-18, 2012.
Transversal Dialogues, Resemo/Tema Genus, Linköping University, September 6, 2012.
g12 - National conference on gender research. Göteborg University, Göteborg, Nov. 28-30, 2012.
On the Move. ACSIS Cultural Studies Conference 2013, Campus Norrköping, Linköping University, June 11-13, 2013.
Soma technics, Conference, Linköping University, 17-19 juni, 2013.

The project's key publications, and a discussion of these

Various publications cover different aspects of the study and are difficult to rank. The monograph with the provisional title "Mental Illness and Sexual Rights. Negotiations for citizenship in RFSLs transnational policy 1950-2000" covers the projects purpose and all of its issues, and presents several of the projects results. The methodological special issue "Queer Methodology", Lambda Nordica, Nordic Journal for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Research, No. 3-4, 2010 (In which the project participated as guest editor along with Steorn & Ambjörnsson) discusses methodological problems and was important in the projects initial phase. This methodological special issue has been appreciated internationally and is used in teaching. "Sexual cosmopolitans? Queering Sexual Citizenship", Lambda Nordica, Nordic Journal for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Research (accepted) discusses the conditions of sexual citizenship and poses new questions to the field of research at a later stage of the study. The article "Values in Motion: Sexuality, Normativity, and Change" in a forthcoming issue of Cultural Unbound, is part of a special issue on Values in Motion and Social Movements in which the project is involved in the guest editorial. Sexual politics in Sweden has a long history and many accumulated questions concerning the need for research back in time, and this has led to that the project is involved in the larger undertaking "The History of Sexual Politics" involving a network of 24 researchers working with sexual politics from the Swedish Middle Ages to the present, discussions on source material in workshops and seminars, and other collaborations. The project is involved in the editorial of a book about the history of sexual politics generated from this network.
 

List of publications

"Introduction of Queer Methodology", Lambda Nordica, Nordic Journal for Gay, Lesbian, Bi- and Trans Research, no 3-4, 2010, ed. Together with Patrik Steorn and Fanny Ambjörnsson (published).
"Sexual Cosmopolitans? Queering Sexual Citizenship", Lambda Nordica, Nordic Journal for Gay, Lesbian, Bi- and Trans Research (accepted).
"Deconstructing the Soma Technics of Sexual Rights", Soma Technics. Edinburgh University Press, (submitted).

"Values in Motion: Sexuality, Normativity, and Change" i Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, Linköping University Electronic Press, (forthcoming).
Mentalsjukdom och sexuell rättighet. Förhandlingar om medborgarskap i RFSLs transnationella politik 1950-2000, Mongraphy in Swedish, (forthcoming).
Sexualpolitikens historia, vol 1 & 2, introduction and ed. together with Klara Arnberg and Fia Sundevall, anthology (forthcomining).