Reclaiming the Narrative: Online LGBTQ+ Self-Advocacy and Counterpublic Practices as Resistance to Intersectional Interpellation

Activity: Lecture / PresentationAcademic

Description

At first glance, cyberspace in its current state may seem like an unsafe environment for LGBTQ+ communities, amidst an abundance of commentators continuously framing LGBTQ+ issues in conservative and reactionary ways, lately especially targeting transgender and non-binary people. However, as conducive as Web 2.0—the “Participatory Web”—has been to the dissemination of marginalizing narratives, it has also enabled voices previously subordinated within LGBTQ+ communities to globally democratically intervene in social justice conversations. The aim of this presentation is twofold. First, it briefly presents the findings of the presenter’s Research Master’s thesis, which explores discursive patterns in self-advocatory social media content retrieved from LGBTQ+-related hashtags on the microblogging platforms Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. This thesis finds that (hash)tagging affordances of microblogging platforms allow LGBTQ+ users with polyvalent interests and (sub)identities to find like-minded others and collaboratively devise new frameworks for self-expression and self-advocacy. Amongst LGBTQ+ netizens, especially trans*, aromantic+, asexual+, bi+, and BIPOC counterpublics have found innovative ways to use social media to critique and introduce alternatives to marginalizing normative conceptions of gender and sexuality, including through the coinage of new words (“neo-identities”) to express distinct experiences of gender and attraction that previously lacked words. Second, in the context of the presenter’s present PhD research, the presentation explores the potential and limits of the affordances of online (counter)publics for narrative control in mitigating negative outcomes of intersectional marginalization for LGBTQ+ youth of colour in the Netherlands, for instance in making sense of and cultivating vocabularies for the various antagonisms in their environments.
Period1 Feb 2023
Event titleThe Netherlands Winter School on Narrative: The Limits of Narrative
Event typeOther
Conference number2023
LocationGroningen, NetherlandsShow on map