Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences 1538121409, 9781538121405

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Theme 1: Relationalities
1 Relationalities in/through Difference
2 Revisiting a Letter for Someday
3 Embracing the Criminal
4 “Chinese Top, British Bottom”
Theme 2: Spatialities
5 Calaveras, Calacas, and Cultural Production
6 Ain’t My First Rodeo in Homonormative Whiteness
7 Intercultural Queer Slippages and Translations
8 “Queerly Ambivalent”
Theme 3: Praxis and Social Justice
9 How Queer (of Color) Is Intercultural Communication?
10 Queerying Race, Culture, and Sex
11 (Re)defining Boundaries and the Politics of Belonging in the Film Pariah
12 Mobilizing Allies for Black Transgender Women
13 Dialoguing about the Nexus of Queer Studies and Intercultural Communication
Closing Thoughts
Index
About the Editors and Contributors

Citation preview

Queer Intercultural Communication The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences Edited by Shinsuke Eguchi University of New Mexico Bernadette Marie Calafell Gonzaga University

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Executive Editor: Elizabeth Swayze Editorial Assistant: Megan Manzano Senior Marketing Manager: Amy Whitaker Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced with permission, appear on the appropriate pages within the text. Published by Rowman & Littlefield An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 https://rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949261 ISBN 9781538121405 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781538121412 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781538121429 (ebook) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Reorienting Queer Intercultural Communication Shinsuke Eguchi and Bernadette Marie Calafell

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Theme 1: Relationalities 1 Relationalities in/through Difference: Explorations in Queer Intercultural Communication Gust A. Yep, Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui, and Ryan M. Lescure 2 Revisiting a Letter for Someday: Writing Toward a Queer Iranian Diasporic Potentiality Shadee Abdi 3 Embracing the Criminal: Queer and Trans Relational Liberatory Pedagogies Benny LeMaster and Meggie Mapes 4 “Chinese Top, British Bottom”: Becoming a Gay Male Internet Celebrity in China Tianyang Zhou Theme 2: Spatialities 5 Calaveras, Calacas, and Cultural Production: The Queer Politics of Brown Belonging at U.S. Día de los Muertos Celebrations Megan Elizabeth Morrissey

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6 Ain’t My First Rodeo in Homonormative Whiteness: Queer Intercultural Lessons from the International Gay Rodeo Community Dawn Marie D. McIntosh 7 Intercultural Queer Slippages and Translations Ahmet Atay 8 “Queerly Ambivalent”: Navigating Global and Local Normativities in Postcolonial Ghana Godfried Asante Theme 3: Praxis and Social Justice 9 How Queer (of Color) Is Intercultural Communication?: Then and There, Jotería the Game as a Praxis of Queerness, Advocacy, and Utopian Aesthetics Robert Gutierrez-Perez and Luis Manuel Andrade 10 Queerying Race, Culture, and Sex: Examining HIV PreExposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Social Marketing for African American and Latinx Gay and Bisexual Men Andrew Spieldenner and Deion Hawkins 11 (Re)defining Boundaries and the Politics of Belonging in the Film Pariah Sheena C. Howard 12 Mobilizing Allies for Black Transgender Women: Digital Stories, Intersectionality, and #SayHerName Nicole Files-Thompson and Melina McConatha 13 Dialoguing about the Nexus of Queer Studies and Intercultural Communication Bernadette Marie Calafell and Thomas K. Nakayama

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Closing Thoughts: The Future of Queer Intercultural Communication Shinsuke Eguchi, Sophie Jones, Hannah R. Long, and Anthony Rosendo Zariñana

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Index

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About the Editors and Contributors

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Acknowledgments

Collectively, we as the coeditors would like to thank all the chapter contributors to this edited collection. Without your rigorous and intellectual work, this book would not be possible. Also, we thank Elizabeth Swayze at Rowman & Littlefield for her continuous support throughout this book’s publication process. Without your having originally approached us for collaboration, this book would not be possible. Moreover, we would like to extend our appreciation to Rowman & Littlefield’s editing and production teams for ensuring the quality of this edited collection. Thank you! Shinsuke Eguchi would like to thank my dear friend/ally/coeditor Dr. Bernadette Marie Calafell for her unconditional and loving support. You are always there for me! Love you! Also, I would like to extend my appreciation to Dr. Satoshi Toyosaki who originally taught me how to work on edited book publication processes. Moreover, I thank my PhD dissertation advisors, Drs. William J. Starosta and Melbourne S. Cummings for influencing me to envision how to “ferment” intercultural communication theory and research. I also credit Drs. Nicole Files-Thompson, Gust A. Yep, Dawn Marie D. McIntosh, Shadee Abdi, Andy Kai-Chun Chuang, Benny LeMaster, Robert Gutierrez-Perez, Ahmet Atay, Bryant Keith Alexander, Jeffery Q. McCune Jr., Andrew Spieldenner, Godfried Asante, Sachi Sekimoto, Yea-Wen Chen, Christopher Brown, Rachel A. Griffin, Deborah J. Borisoff, Victoria Chen, James W. Chesebro, Tina A. Harris, Pavi Prasad, Leilani Nishime, David Oh, Rona Tamiko Halualani, Tom Nakayama, Michelle A. Holling, Gloria Pindi, Amber Johnson, Sarah Amira De la Garza, Erin Watley, Myra N. Roberts, and Zhao Ding for your continuing support during (and after) the course of this particular project. Furthermore, I thank the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico for their support in making my queer intercultural research program possible. Finally, I dedicate v

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my efforts on queer intercultural communication to all who struggle every day against queerphobia and/or transphobia in and across local, national, and global contexts. Thank you and love you all! Bernadette Marie Calafell would like to thank my dear friend and coeditor Dr. Shinsuke Eguchi for their consistent and unconditional friendship, love, patience, and support. Additionally, thanks to Dr. Dawn Marie McIntosh, Miranda Olzman, Dr. Santhosh Chandrashekar, Dr. Tom Nakayama, Dr. Nina Lozano, Dr. Raquel Moreira, Dr. Fatima Chrifi Alaoui, Dr. Shadee Abdi, Dr. Robert Gutierrez-Perez, Dr. Andy Chuang, Dr. Sara Baugh-Harris, Bernardita Yunis Varas, Cassidy Ellis, Cristy Dougherty, Caleb Green, Taisha McMickens, Wanda Lakota, Charles LuLevitt, Jessica Johnson, and Sarah Gonzalez Noueiry for their friendship, love, and kindness. I dedicate this work to my friend and colleague Dr. Luis Leon. Thank you for letting me share some of your light. I’ll miss and love you forever.

Introduction Reorienting Queer Intercultural Communication Shinsuke Eguchi and Bernadette Marie Calafell

Critical intercultural communication studies is best suited to pay close attention to and follow how macro conditions and structures of power (the authority of history, economic and market conditions, former political sphere, institutional arenas, and ideologies) play into and share microacts/processes of communication between/among cultural groups/members. —R. T. Halualani and T. K. Nakayama, “Critical Intercultural Communication Studies: At a Crossroads” Critical intercultural communication studies “privilege[s] the body as a site of knowledge, extending the relationship between performance studies and intercultural communication.” —B. M. Calafell and S. Moreman, “Iterative Hesitancies and Latinidad: The Reverberances of Raciality” The U.S. American capitalistic heteronormative circulations of power recurrently patrol and protect the boundaries of intercultural communication theory. Topics and concerns relating to lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) people, and especially LGBTQ people of color, are overlooked. —S. Eguchi and G. Asante, “Disidentifications Revisited: Queer(y)ing Intercultural Communication Theory”

BACKGROUND OF QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION The interdisciplinary field of intercultural communication was born in the United States and largely draws on anthropology and sociology. The field 1

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began to gain visibility especially after World War II as it was connected to foreign service training (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990). It was the postwar era when the United States increasingly sent its government agents and military personnel to other countries; for example, a number of U.S. military bases were built in countries like Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. To meet the United States’ imperialist needs, the field of intercultural communication paid extensive attention to similarities and differences of communication styles, processes, and problems between/among cultures. The field, in some sense, became based on the idea that White U.S. Americans needed to be given training about how to interact with local communities across the world. This approach was guided by cultural generalizations, and it largely ignored issues of power. Thus this research, without a doubt, assumes a culturally essentialist binary between U.S. Americans and Others (Chen & Starosta, 1996). Such a binary paradigm overgeneralizes cultural differences of communication based on essentialist boundaries of nations (Ono, 2010). The invisible assumption about the United States is that it is mostly White, cismale, heterosexual, able-bodied, and affluent. Others were signified as non-U.S. American, often non-White, cismale, heterosexual, able-bodied, and affluent. As a result, the overwhelming majority of intercultural communication theorizing has marginalized the historical complexities and contemporary realities of differences (such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, language, coloniality, and the body). As an illustration, communication styles, processes, and problems among racial and ethnic minorities and migrants such as Asian Americans, Black/African Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islander Americans are often ignored (Shin & Jackson, 2003). To disrupt and shift the aforementioned circumference of intercultural communication, a large number of scholars, including but not limited to Calafell and Delgado (2004); Chuang (2003); Collier, Hegde, Lee, Nakayama, and Yep (2001); Cooks (2001); Delgado (1994, 1998); Drzewiecka and Halualani (2002); Halualani (2000); Martin and Nakayama (1999); Moon (1996); Nakayama (1994); and Starosta and Chen (2005), pushed for critical approaches to intercultural communication. This genealogy of intercultural communication brings to the fore the complexities and contradictions of difference. The intersecting webs of social, political, economic, and historical conditions and structures of power always already reproduce and reconstitute intracultural and intercultural relations of differences (Warren, 2008). The release of Nakayama and Halualani’s (2010) book, The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, further establishes its field of inquiry to counter the historical development of intercultural communication. Outlined by Halualani, Mendoza, and Drzewiecka (2009), “a critical intercultural perspective can help reconceptualize intercultural communication and

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broaden how ‘inter’ and ‘intra’ might be better deployed to analyze more fully the relationship between culture, identity, and power” (p. 31). Still, questions, critiques, and practices of sexuality, sex, and gender have not been a central focus of critical intercultural communication. Consequently, Chávez (2013) proposed a field of inquiry called queer intercultural communication in a special issue of the prominent, peer-reviewed Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, published quarterly by the National Communication Association (NCA). While glossing over the “queer” discussions in the Nakayama and Halualani (2010) text, Chávez calls to the forefront counternormative productions of sexual and gender knowledge(s) associated with being queer to interrogate the intersections between/among culture, identity, and power. She introduces the genealogy of queer critique disrupting the intelligibility of LGBTQIA+ politics 1 as the global standard. Non-Western sexual dissident and gender-nonconforming subjects are ideologically forced to embody the Western paradigm of sexuality, sex, and gender as the liberal and progressive sign of modernity. Following this call, Eguchi and Asante (2016) push forward queer intercultural communication in Communication Theory, the flagship journal of the International Communication Association (ICA). They collaboratively identify with and critique the ways in which the contemporary condition of transnationalism Whitens/Westernizes everyday life nuances of queer people of color in and across local, national, and global contexts. Thus, forefronting queerness is a strategy to destabilize the normative knowledge production of intercultural communication. This field of inquiry is to seek alternative ways of knowing, being, and acting that counter the majoritarian belongings in and across local, national, and global contexts. This course of queer intercultural communication theorizing is relatively new in the discipline. Simultaneously, communication scholarship (e.g., Alexander, 2010; Carrillo Rowe, 2008; Calafell, 2007a; 2007b; 2009; Corey & Nakayama,1997; Holman Jones, 2005; Lee, 2003; Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Martinez, 2003; Yep, Lovaas, & Ho, 2001) dealing with both queer and intercultural communication has existed for a long time. However, these works did not receive recognition as intercultural because of their “queer” elements. Yet it is worth pointing out that Nakayama’s (1994) work was indeed a precursor of queer intercultural communication. Nakayama interrogated the mediated representations of White and Asian masculinities in the Hollywood film Showdown in Little Tokyo. Referencing a major gay Asian artist, writer, and intellectual, Richard Fung, Nakayama critiqued how the film used the racialized gender feminization of a Japanese American character juxtaposed with the heteromasculinist power and privilege of White phallus. Nakayama’s nuanced writing implicated the contemporary trends of queer analysis, in general, and queer Asian American critique, in particular. Nakayama approached representation as a temporal site of transgression. This mirrors the

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approach of today’s queer intercultural critics (e.g., Abdi & Calafell, 2017; Eguchi, Files-Thompson, & Calafell, 2018) to the representations of queerness as a site of both possibility and impossibility toward the future. In addition, Nakayama elaborated the concept of failure, which is currently foundational to queer theorizing. Failure points to what is missing from the cisheteronormative present (Halberstam, 2011; Muñoz, 2009; Snorton, 2017). Thus, it is important to acknowledge such a legacy of queer intercultural precursors, one that has created a path toward the current state of queer intercultural communication, that is, in order to politicize, historicize, and contextualize complexities and fluidities of sexuality, sex, and gender in and across the lines of differences. Consequently, this introductory chapter reorients queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry. We first map out conceptual foundations of queer intercultural communication that elaborate intersections between/ among queer of color critiques, global queer studies, trans studies, and disability studies. We also offer our conceptualizations and operationalizations of three key themes for this book: intersectionality, belonging, and differences. Then the organization and contents of this book follow. The overall goal of this introduction is to fully contextualize this book’s production— provide its background scenery—hopefully to allow readers to grasp the volume’s significance. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry heavily draws on the foundational assumption of queer theorizing that rejects the universalized and essentialist sexual paradigm of a gay-straight binary. Outlined in Yep, Lovaas, and Elia (2003), queer theorists interrogate the conceptions of sexuality as multiple, unstable, and fluid social constructions in and across lines of differences. The overall mission of queer theorizing is to question, critique, and hopefully dismantle the cultural production of (hetero)sexuality as a structural body of knowledge(s) that helps sustain the ordinary and normal. Queer theorists are intellectually and politically interested in problematizing the institutional norms, practices, and discourses that discipline, control, and surveil queer sexual interactions, relationships, and contexts. However, there are major criticisms against the course of queer theorizing. The framework of queer theorizing tends to be raceless (Anzaldúa, 1991; Muñoz, 1999). Queer is used as an umbrella term that stands in with categorical differences (such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, class, and the body). More specifically, compulsory whiteness as a normative identity, discourse, institution, and structure organizes the earlier development of

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queer theorizing (Cohen, 1997; Ferguson, 2004). It centers around the logics of individualism, agency, and sexual freedom that ignore, erase, and marginalize the politics of difference (Johnson, 2001). The queer theoretical assumption is that all persons should be able to become and be whom they want to be. However, this individualistic usage of queer undervalues the politics of difference. It often produces a contested site of struggle that promotes collective resistances and communal ties among sexually dissident and gender-nonconforming people of color. Collective labels are often necessary for minoritarians who grow up and are raised in racialized and classed communities to fight with the normative sets of power relations. Consequently, the genealogy of queer of color critique is concerned with explicating culture-specific and text-specific nuances of knowledge(s) embedded in the material realities of sexual dissident and gender-nonconforming people of color (see Johnson & Henderson, 2005; Johnson, 2016). The growth of communication scholarship dealing with culture is heavily influenced by such interdisciplinary schools of queer of color critique. To cite a few examples, Calafell (2007a) examines how then in-the-closet singer Ricky Martin disidentified with, and performed strategic sexual ambiguity that was challenging to, the hyperheterosexual archetype of the Latin lover. McCune (2008) pays attention to the popular cultural discourse of men on the downlow to politicize, historicize, and contextualize racialized and classed nuances of sexual fluidity and discretion among Black/African American men who engage in same-sex sexual relations. Also, Chávez (2010) demonstrates the intersections between/among LGBTQIA+ and migrants’ rights movements that challenge the normative construction of citizenship. Both counternormative categories are rhetorically strangers to the nation-state implicated by the simultaneous technologies of whiteness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism. Moreover, Moreman and McIntosh (2010) engage in a culturally nuanced analysis of Latina drag queens and their performances, which cannot be solely coded through their queerness. The intersection of race, gender, class, and nation materializes in their drag performances visualized through their “Brown” bodies. Finally, Calafell (2012) uses a performative writing to interrogate the way in which her own Chicana queerness is constantly racialized and gendered as monstrous in the academy. Women of color have been historically marked as threatening Others. The emergence of queer of color communication scholarship helps establish the foundation of queer intercultural communication in the discipline of communication. In addition, global and transnational elements of queer of color critique influence the development of queer intercultural communication. Works such as Eng (2010), Lim (2014), Pérez (2015), and Puar (2007) push forward a global and transnational aspect to identify with the complexities and contradictions of sexuality and gender in and across historically specific

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times, spaces, and contexts. These scholars critique the productions of LGBTQIA+ identities, discourses, and politics as White, Western, and U.S. American phenomena rooted in the realities of liberal capitalism. Because cultural discourses of LGBTQIA+ equalities are hypervisible, Western nations such as the United States signal and affirm sexual and gender exceptionalism. With this “advanced” and “progressive” image of liberalism, the West’s viewpoint comes to serve as the modern, global standard. At the same time, non-Western nations implicate underdevelopment and uncivilization of sexuality and gender because of the institutional and political stigmatizations of homosexuality and transgenderism. Accordingly, LGBTQIA+ identities, performances, and politics structurally operate as ideological products of White, Western, and U.S. American modernity. These perspectives have also influenced the emergence of queer intercultural communication scholarship. For example, Abdi and Van Gilder (2016) examine how first-generation queer Iranian women make sense of their counternormative sexualities as they relate to Iranian cultures, families, and relational practices. Eguchi (2015) interrogates the complexity of same-sex sexual and romantic relations between Asian men and Black men to identify and critique the transnational and intercultural circuits of whiteness as the normative gay aesthetic. Goltz, Zingsheim, Mastin, and Murphy (2016) demonstrate how discourses about sexual and gender minoritarian identities are uniquely negotiated in Kenya. Calafell (2017) challenges the simplistic framing of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen to contextualize how homonormativity travels internationally to cast local understandings of queerness as primitive. Huang and Brouwer (2018) complicate the White, Western, and U.S. American notion of coming out of the closet as they examine how contemporary Chinese queer subjects negotiate their counternormative sexualities as private matters. While global queer studies is a major part of queer intercultural communication, transgender studies also influences its genealogical development. Works by Snorton (2017) and Stryker (2006) call into question how cisgenderism has historically produced and constituted the normal and ordinary genders. Cisgenderism is a discursive practice that normalizes the embodiment of gender identity as a match for a given sex morphology. Gender identity is assumed to be stable, fixed, and essentialized throughout the lifetime. Accordingly, Stryker, Currah, and Moore (2008) state that trans-ing is used to conceptually highlight transgenderism as a verb to denaturalize and destabilize normative gender conformities and discreteness. Such intellectual and political perspective is rooted in the paradigm of gender as multiple, unstable, and fluid. As Green (2016) and Ziegler (2016) demonstrate, the social and performative aspects of gender always already intersect with the lines of differences (i.e., race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and the body) in

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and across historical and ideological contexts. These outlooks of transgender studies have also inspired queer intercultural communication scholarship. For example, Johnson (2013) showcases a clear connection between White privilege and cisgender privilege. LeMaster (2015) analyzes Logo’s RuPaul’s Drag U as a media text to interrogate how cisgender women consume drag performances. Spencer and Capuzza (2015) published Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories. It hints at possible ways to “trans” communication scholarship in various subfields, including but not limited to intercultural communication, relational communication, health communication, media, and rhetoric and public address. Yep and Chivers (2017) analyze Fox’s Glee to showcase how the heteronormative productions of articulated categories make and remake mutually constituting and imbalanced interplays of gender and race. Despite these contributions, queer intercultural communication continues to require more trans interventions. Lastly, queer intercultural communication has also greatly benefited from disability studies (e.g., McRuer & Mollow, 2012; Puar, 2017). McRuer (2006) finds thick intersections among queerness and disability. The cisheteronormative model of family and kinship rooted in monogamy, reproduction, and privatization is a major source of marginalizing queer/counternormative modes of sexuality and gender as irregular and unusual. Such historical legacies of discrimination and prejudice hint at the ways in which both homosexuality and transgenderism were diagnosed as medical disorders. Finally in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed the category of homosexuality from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) (Elia 2003). Also, it was just in 2013 when the APA recategorized the diagnosis of transgenderism as a bodily disorder in the DSM. Now it is gender dysphoria (Halberstam, 2018). These occurrences of homosexuality and transgenderism historically constructed as disability represent the taken-forgranted power and privilege of able-bodiedness intersecting with healthism and antiqueerness. Communication scholars (e.g., Calafell, 2015) have incorporated intellectual and political elements of disability studies as they relate to queerness. REORIENTING QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AS A FIELD OF INQUIRY Drawing on the conceptual foundations of queer intercultural communication described above, we organize the contents of this book to reorient queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry. To do so, we privilege three major concepts as methodologies of explicit or implicit concern for the

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chapters in this volume. Again, these are intersectionality, belonging, and differences. Intersectionality Intersectionality, as a feminist tradition, has been increasingly popular in the discipline of communication in general, and particularly in the field of international and intercultural communication (Yep & Chivers, 2017). For instance, Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991) first coined the term intersectional/intersectionality as a conceptual tool to account for the operation of race, gender, and class to produce particular nuanced everyday experiences for women of color. Hill Collins (1990) extended Crenshaw’s work to the matrix of domination to further understand how larger systems of power work. Queer theorists of color (e.g., Cohen, 1997; Johnson, 2001; Muñoz, 1999) have followed this move toward intersectionality to account for the complexity and contradiction of sexuality as a multiple, unstable, and fluid construct intersecting with race, gender, and class. Since then, intersectionality has been utilized to deconstruct the complex and fluid layers of race, gender, sexuality, sex, and class in regard to nationality, citizenship, migration, coloniality, language, and the body in and across the international and intercultural contexts (e.g., Abdi & Calafell, 2017; Alexander, 2010; Chávez, 2012; Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Eguchi, 2015, 2019; Griffin, 2012; Yep, 2013). At the same time, some scholars (e.g., Puar, 2007) have critiqued intersectionality as a questionable form of identity politics or positionalities, as it appears to require the subject to check simplistic and formulaic boxes of (multiple) identity categories as a device of diversity management. Puar (2007) suggests that “the study of intersectional identities often involves taking imbricated identities apart one by one to see how they influence each other, a process that betrays the founding impulse of intersectionality, that identities cannot so easily be cleaved” (p. 212). We concur with Puar’s concern regarding the misuse of intersectionality as a tool of diversity management. However, we still value the significance of intersectionality that contributes to the theorizing of queer intercultural communication. As Chávez (2013); Eguchi, Calafell, and Files-Thompson (2014); Eguchi and Asante (2016); and Jones and Calafell (2012) argue, the intellectual and political move of attending to the complex and multiple directions of power that create an ongoing interplay of intersectional tensions between privilege and oppression is a central concern for queer interculturalists. Accordingly, when we say intersectionality, we also implicate what Yep (2010, 2013, 2016) calls thick intersectionalities, which avoids a simplistic and formulaic misuse of intersectionality. Thick intersectionalities require scholars to pay careful and extra attention to “the lived experiences and

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biographies of the persons inhabiting a particular intersection” in and across historically specific times, spaces, and contexts (Yep, 2010, p. 173). The goal of thick intersectionalities is to politicize, historicize, and contextualize the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, class, and the body in a thick descriptive manner. Incorporating this line of Yep’s theorizing, we emphasize that intersectionality is a methodology identifying with and critiquing the complex particularities of tensions between macro structural and systemic forces and micro acts and processes of identity and performance. To further improve our perspective on intersectionality, we also locate the concept of belonging and differences in this project. Belonging The politics of belonging, an affective affinity for a space/place and situation, is also a major issue of queer intercultural communication (Eguchi & Asante, 2016). It always already implicates often invisible power relations, such as heteronormativity, cisgenderism, patriarchy, whiteness, and capitalism. A sense of belonging is a historical, structural, and ideological production of inclusion (and exclusivity) that certain privileged subjects are allowed to feel in and across certain times, spaces, and contexts. For example, minoritarian subjects such as women, LGBTQIA+ people, people of color, and migrants historically have not been given a full sense of belonging to the U.S. nationstate (e.g., Carrillo Rowe, 2008; Chávez, 2010). The U.S. nation-state always already sustains the power, privilege, and supremacy of White, cisgender, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, and affluent as the sign and affirmation of normative citizenship (Eguchi, Files-Thompson, & Calafell, 2018). This ideological structure historically produces and constitutes a feeling of exclusion for minoritarian subjects. At the same time, for the strategic sustainability of system, there has been structural pressure to assimilate certain kinds of gays and lesbians into the nation-state (e.g., Eng, 2010; Puar, 2007). Today’s sexual liberalism promotes the White, cisgender, able-bodied, and affluent images of gay and lesbian subjects as almost like heterosexuals. The heteronormative logics of lifetime, promoting the cultural capital of marriage, nuclear family, and reproduction, organizes (White) gay and lesbian rights. As Ferguson (2005) suggests, Sociological arguments about the socially constructed nature of (homo)sexuality index the contemporary entrance of White gays and lesbians into the rights and privileges of American citizenship. As they extend such practices and access racial and class privileges by conforming to gender and sexual norms, White gay formations in particular become homonormative locations that comply with heteronormative protocols. (p. 53)

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In addition, these White gay formations are rapidly traveling in and across local, national, and global contexts (Chávez, 2013). Such transnational and intercultural flow of White gay formations ignores, erases, and marginalizes the ways in which the particularities of race and class produce and constitute queer/counternormative protocols of sexual and gender differences. The sexually dissident and gender nonconforming subjects who are racialized, classed, and gendered remain marginalized from obtaining a full sense of belonging in and across local, national, and global contexts. Accordingly, differences matter. Differences In this book, we address the production and negotiation of differences implicated by often invisible relationships between power and identity (such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, ability, language, coloniality, and the body). These relations of power and identity politicize, historicize, and contextualize the hierarchical structures of differences from which subjects are called to perform who they are (Warren, 2008). As Calafell and Moreman (2010) maintain, “Our cultural identity is a successful achievement per the correct performance of the discursive practice by which we are called forth. As we repetitively answer discursive call, our racial identity becomes naturalized for ourselves and for others” (p. 403). We add to Calafell and Moreman’s (2010) perspective with our emphasis on intersectionality. Differences are socially constructed matters of material realities to the extent that relationships between power and identity produce and constitute intersectional differences onto the body. The production and negotiation of differences is complex, constitutive, and performative in and across historically specific times, spaces, and contexts. We are interested in the ways that queers of color intersectionally resist, perform in alignment with, or disidentify with socially constructed expectations of their difference as Others. Difference and its meaning matter, as does the struggle over its meaning. ORGANIZATION AND CONTENTS OF THE BOOK The chapters in this book point to these three major concepts as methodologies, mentioned above. The book consists of three sections: “Relationalities,” “Spatialities,” and “Praxis and Social Justice.” Chapters that fall under “Relationalities” pay particular attention to queer intercultural particularities, or the nuances of being relational in and across the lines of differences. In chapter 1, “Relationalities in/through Difference: Explorations in Queer Intercultural Communication,” Gust A. Yep, Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui, and Ryan M. Lescure review some of the fundamental issues that must be considered when doing work in queer intercultural communication

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research. They propose five themes: sexuality; sexual systems; sexual identity; hegemony and power; and cultural translation and legibility. In chapter 2, “Revisiting a Letter for Someday: Writing Toward a Queer Iranian Diasporic Potentiality,” Shadee Abdi identifies with and critiques her personal narrative as a queer Iranian American to offer often untidy, nuanced, and chaotic aspects of belonging within the broader scope of queer intercultural communication. In chapter 3, “Embracing the Criminal: Queer and Trans Relational Liberatory Pedagogies,” Benny LeMaster and Meggie Mapes critically reflect on their performances of queer and trans relational liberatory pedagogies (QTRLP)—that is, an embodied pedagogy that intervenes in the discursive sedimentation of the “criminal” and the concomitant reification of the prison industrial complex (PIC). Chapter 4, “‘Chinese Top, British Bottom’: Becoming a Gay Male Internet Celebrity in China,” written by Tianyang Zhou, examines discourses surrounding gay male Internet celebrity in contemporary China. He suggests ways that the process of audience transmedia consumption constructs and transforms gay male masculinities across time and space. Chapters 5 through 8 pay careful attention to queer intercultural nuances or conditions relating to space, hence “Spatialities.” This theme begins with “Calaveras, Calacas, and Cultural Production: The Queer Politics of Brown Belonging at U.S. Día de los Muertos Celebrations.” In this chapter, Megan Elizabeth Morrissey reconsiders the ofrenda (altar) as a key component of the holiday. In particular, she showcases this traditional point of remembrance, which is comically reconstituted in U.S. celebrations and becomes a nodal point of incongruous play that destabilizes the relation between White U.S. belonging and Brown Latinx inclusion. In chapter 6, “Ain’t My First Rodeo in Homonormative Whiteness: Queer Intercultural Lessons from the International Gay Rodeo Community,” Dawn Marie D. McIntosh engages in a critical performance ethnography. She analyzes the way in which White gay cowboys/cowgirls perform their embodiments of homonormativity in the queer space of gay rodeos. Chapter 7, “Intercultural Queer Slippages and Translations,” written by Ahmet Atay, reflexively interrogates his intercultural negotiations of relating to queer, international, diasporic, cosmopolitan, and immigrant spaces. In chapter 8, “‘Queerly Ambivalent’: Navigating Global and Local Normativities in Postcolonial Ghana,” Godfried Asante articulates the concept of queerly ambivalent by examining the way in which queer male subjects negotiate global and local norms to make sense of their sexualities in Ghana. Chapters that fall under the last theme, “Praxis and Social Justice,” reconsider the way in which reorienting queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry has practical potentiality for the promotion of social justice. In chapter 9, “How Queer (of Color) Is Intercultural Communication? Then and There, Jotería the Game as a Praxis of Queerness, Advocacy, and Uto-

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pian Aesthetics,” Robert Gutierrez-Perez and Luis Manuel Andrade pay attention to their lived experiences as Chicanx, Latinx, and Mexicanx queer men (of color). In particular, they aim to showcase their intellectual and political attempt to follow the call for a return to the body; an action against normative logics of who can be privileged to produce knowledge; and queer intercultural aesthetic to perform research. Chapter 10, “Queerying Race, Culture, and Sex: Examining HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Social Marketing for African American and Latinx Gay and Bisexual Men,” coauthored by Andrew Spieldenner and Deion Hawkins, reevaluates queer intercultural communication as a means of depicting racial/ethnic minority gay and bisexual men in social marketing campaigns. Sheena Howard, author of chapter 11, “(Re)defining Boundaries and the Politics of Belonging in the Film Pariah,” draws upon cultural prism theory to examine the film Pariah as the text of praxis and social justice. She argues that Pariah not only disrupts normative notions of representation but also points to the exclusionary practices of the gay rights movement rooted in whiteness. In chapter 12, “Mobilizing Allies for Black Transgender Women: Digital Stories, Intersectionality, and #SayHerName,” Nicole Files-Thompson and Melina McConatha examine the intersectional Black feminist #SayHerName initiative. They unpack its social media campaign that strategically works with and mobilizes existing anti-Black activist communities for the purpose of gaining awareness of material violence against Black transgender women. Lastly, chapter 13, “Dialoguing about the Nexus of Queer Studies and Intercultural Communication,” written by Bernadette Marie Calafell and Thomas K. Nakayama, closes this theme. As they conversationally perform a series of questions and answers, the coauthors envision the nexus of intersections among critical intercultural communication and queer studies. Following this collection of chapters, Shinsuke Eguchi, Sophie Jones, Hannah Long, and Anthony Rosendo Zariñana provide “Closing Thoughts: The Future of Queer Intercultural Communication.” This concluding chapter considers the holes in this volume, focusing on topical areas of queer intercultural communication that continue to be overlooked today. They compartmentalize their argument into four example foci: non-Western paradigms of queerness/transness, decoloniality, fat and dis/ability studies, and relationality/coalition and transing. In so doing, they conclude that the field of queer intercultural communication is a necessary, relevant, and exciting area of communication research and teaching for the future. NOTE 1. LGBTQIA+ stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual, and plus.” “Plus” means all other sexualities, sexes, and genders.

Introduction

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REFERENCES Abdi, S., & Calafell, B. M. (2017). Queer utopias and a (feminist) Iranian vampire: A critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34(4), 358–370. Abdi, S., & Van Gilder, B. (2016). Cultural (in)visibility and identity dissonance: Queer Iranian-American women and their negotiation of existence. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(1), 69–86. Alexander, B. K. (2010). Br(other) in the classroom: Testimony, reflection, and cultural negotiation. In T. K. Nakayama & R. T. Halualani (Eds.), The handbook of critical intercultural communication (pp. 364–381). West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Anzaldúa, G. (1991). To(o) queer the writer: Loca, escrita y chicana. In B. Warland (Ed.), Inversions: Writing by dykes, queers, and lesbians (pp. 251–273). Vancouver, Canada: Press Gang. Calafell, B. M. (2007a). Latina/o communication studies: Theorizing performance. New York: Peter Lang. Calafell, B. M. (2007b). Mentoring and love: An open letter. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 7(5), 425–441. Calafell, B. M. (2009). “She ain’t no diva!”: Reflections on in/hospitable guests/hosts, reciprocity, and desire. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 5(5), 1–18. Retrieved from http://liminalities.net/5-4/diva.pdf Calafell, B. M. (2012). Monstrous femininity: Constructions of women of color in the academy. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 36(2), 111–130. Calafell, B. M. (2015). Monstrosity, performance, and race in contemporary culture. New York: Peter Lang. Calafell, B. M. (2017). Brownness, kissing, and U.S. imperialism: Contextualizing the Orlando massacre. Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, 14(2), 198–202. Calafell, B. M., & Delgado, F. P. (2004). Reading Latina/o images: Interrogating Americanos. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21(1), 1–24. Calafell, B. M., & Moreman, S. (2010). Iterative hesitancies and Latinidad: The reverberances of raciality. In R. Halualani & T. K. Nakayama (Eds.), Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (pp. 400–416). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Carrillo Rowe, A. (2008). Power lines: On the subject of feminist alliances. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chávez, K. R. (2010). Border (in)securities: Normative and differential belonging in LGBTQ and immigrant rights discourse. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7(2), 136–155. Chávez, K. R. (2012). Doing intersectionality: Power, privilege, and identities in political activist communities. In N. Bardhan & M. P. Orbe (Eds.), Identity research and communication: Intercultural reflections and future directions (pp. 21–32). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Chávez, K. R. (2013). Pushing boundaries: Queer intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 83–95. Chen, G. M., & Starosta, W. J. (1996). Intercultural communication competence: Synthesis. Communication Yearbook, 19, 353–383. Chuang, R. (2003). A postmodern critique of cross-cultural and intercultural communication research: Contesting essentialism, positivist dualism, and Eurocentricity. In W. J. Starosta & G. M. Chen (Eds.), Ferment in the intercultural field: Axiology, values, praxis (pp. 24–55). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cohen, C. J. (1997). Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics? GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 3(4), 437–465. Collier, M. J., Hegde, R. S., Lee, W. S., Nakayama, T. K., & Yep, G. A. (2001). Dialogue on the edges: Ferment in communication and culture. In M. J. Collier (Ed.), International and Intercultural Communication Annual 24: Transforming communication about culture: Critical new directions (pp. 219–280). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Halualani, R. T., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Critical intercultural communication studies: At a crossroads. In T. K. Nakayama & R. T. Halualani (Eds.), The handbook of critical intercultural communication (pp. 1–16). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hill Collins, P. (1990). Black feminist thought; knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Holman Jones, S. (2005). (M)othering loss: Telling adoption stories, telling performativity. Text and Performance Quarterly, 25(2), 113–135. Huang, S., & Brouwer, D. C. (2018). Coming out, coming home, coming with: Models of queer sexuality in contemporary China. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 11(2), 97–116. Johnson, E. P. (2001). “Quare” studies or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Text and Performance Quarterly, 21(1), 1–25. Johnson, E. P. (Ed.). (2016). No tea, no shade: New writing in Black queer studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Johnson, E. P., & Henderson, M. E. (Eds.). (2005). Black queer studies: A critical anthology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Johnson, J. R. (2013). Cisgender privilege, intersectionality, and the criminalization of CeCe McDonald: Why intercultural communication needs transgender studies. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 135–144. Jones, R. G., Jr., & Calafell, B. M. (2012). Contesting neoliberalism through critical pedagogy, intersectional reflexivity, and personal narrative: Queer tales of academia. Journal of Homosexuality, 59(7), 957–981. Lee, W. (2003). Kuaering queer theory: My autocritography and a race-conscious womanist, transnational turn. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas, & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 147–170). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1990). Notes in the history of international communication: The foreign service institute and the mandate for intercultural training. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 76(3), 262–281. LeMaster, B. (2015). Discontents of being and becoming fabulous on RuPaul’s Drag U: Queer criticism in neoliberal times. Women Studies in Communication, 38(2), 167–186. Lim, E-B. (2014). Brown boys and rice queens: Spellbinding performances in the Asias. New York: New York University Press. Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory, 9(1), 1–25. Martinez, J. M. (2003). Racisms, heterosexisms, and identities: A semiotic phenomenology of self-understanding. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas, & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 109–127). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. McCune, J. Q., Jr. (2008). Out in the club: The down low, hip-hop, and the architexture of Black masculinity. Text and Performance Quarterly, 28(3), 298–314. McRuer, R. (2006). Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press. McRuer, R., & Mollow, A. (Eds.). (2012). Sex and disability. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moon, D. (1996). Concepts of “culture”: Implications for intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly, 44(1), 70–84. Moreman, S. T., & McIntosh, D. M. (2010). Brown scriptings and rescriptings: A critical performance ethnography of Latina drag queens. Communication and Cultural/Critical Studies, 7(2), 115–135. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Nakayama, T. K. (1994). Show/down time: “Race,” gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 11(2), 162–179.

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Nakayama, T. K., & Halualani, R. T. (Eds.). (2010). The handbook of critical intercultural communication. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Ono, K. (2010). Reflections on “Problematizing ‘Nation’ in Intercultural Communication Research.” In T. K. Nakayama & R. T. Halualani (Eds.), The handbook of critical intercultural communication (pp. 84–97). West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Pérez, H. (2015). A taste for Brown bodies: Gay modernity and cosmopolitan desire. New York: New York University Press. Puar, J. K. (2007). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Puar, J. K. (2017). The right to maim: Debility, capacity, and disability. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Shin, C. I., & Jackson II, R. L. (2003). A review of identity research in communication theory: Reconceptualizing cultural identity. In W. J. Starosta & G. M. Chen (Eds.), International and Intercultural Communication Annual 26: Ferment in the intercultural field: Axiology/ Value/Praxis (pp. 211–240). Washington, DC: National Communication Association. Snorton, C. R. (2017). Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spencer, L. G., & Capuzza, J. C. (Eds.) (2015). Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Starosta, W. J., & Chen, G. M. (2005). International and intercultural communication annual 28: Taking stock in intercultural communication: Where to now? Washington, DC: National Communication Association. Stryker, S. (2006). (De)subjugated knowledges: An introduction to transgender studies. In S. Stryker & S. Whittle (Eds.), The transgender studies reader (pp. 1–17). New York: Routledge. Stryker, S., Currah, P., & Moore, L. S. (2008). Introduction: Trans-, trans, or transgender? WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 36(3/4), 11–22. Warren, J. T. (2008) Performing difference: Repetition in context. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 1(4), 290–308. Yep, G. A. (2010). Toward the de-subjugation of racially marked knowledges in communication. Southern Communication Journal, 75(2), 171–175. Yep, G. A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 118–126. Yep, G. A. (2016). Toward thick(er) intersectionalities: Theorizing, researching, and activating the complexities of communication and identities. In K. Sorrells & S. Sekimoto (Eds.), Globalizing intercultural communication: A reader (pp. 85–93). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Yep, G. A., & Chivers, N. T. (2017). Intersectionality. In Y. Y. Kim & K. McKay-Semmler (Eds.), International encyclopedia of intercultural communication (pp. 1532–1537). West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Yep, G. A., Lovaas, K. E., & Elia, J. P. (2003). Introduction: Queering communication: Starting the conversation. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 1–10). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Yep, G. A., Lovaas, K. E., & Ho, P. C. (2001). Communication in “Asian American” families with queer members: A relational dialectics perspective. In M. Bernstein & R. Reimann (Eds.), Queer families, queer politics: Challenging culture and the state (pp. 152–172). New York: Columbia University Press. Yep, G. A., Russo, S. E., Allen, J. K., & Chivers, N. T. (2017). Uniquely Glee: Transing racialized gender. In R. A. Lind (Ed.), Race and gender in electronic media: Content, context, culture (pp. 55–71). New York: Routledge. Ziegler, K. (2016). Black sissy masculinity and the politics of dis-respectability. In E. P. Johnson (Ed.), No tea no shade: New writings in Black queer studies (pp. 196–215). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Theme 1

Relationalities

Chapter One

Relationalities in/through Difference Explorations in Queer Intercultural Communication Gust A. Yep, Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui, and Ryan M. Lescure

Consistent with critical intercultural communication scholarship, we view culture as a contested zone where cosmologies, ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies, belief systems, social norms, embodied practices, behavioral patterns, and modes of relationality interplay, collide, and are rendered meaningful in a field of power relations in specific geopolitical and historical contexts (e.g., Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, 1992; Halualani, 2019; Nakayama & Halualani, 2013; Sorrells, 2016). As such, intercultural communication might be conceived as a process through which individuals and social groups experience, express, negotiate, consolidate, and contest these views, patterns, and differences. For example, Han (2015), in his research on current cultural narratives about gay Asian men, reports that gay Western narratives repeatedly characterize Asians—whether they are in the United States or on the Asian continent—as homophobic while simultaneously presenting U.S. American gays as not racist. Such dominant narratives influence how individuals and groups, such as gay Asians in the United States, see and define themselves and relate to others, including fellow gay Asians, gay people of color, or White gay men. Because of their pervasiveness and power, these narratives create differences between social groups (e.g., U.S. White gay men as not racist, Asian men as homophobic), obscure different individual and collective patterns (e.g., Asian intragender loving men living in harmony with their partners and biogenetic families), and promote particular social hierarchies (e.g., U.S. White gay men as more progressive, gay Asian men as more backward) in a cultural landscape. To put it another way, intercultural 19

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communication, as exemplified in Han’s (2015) research, is about relationalities in/through differences. Endorsing current work in queer studies, we view queer as both a noun (e.g., being) and a verb (e.g., doing) to signify nonnormativity within particular cultural systems (e.g., Yep, 2013, 2017). In addition, it is important to examine cultural particularities to recognize and analyze what appears to be normative in one cultural system that might be considered nonnormative in another. For example, the concepts of “coming out” (i.e., revealing one’s same-sex sexuality to the social world), “coming home” (i.e., prioritizing one’s biogenetic family in the negotiation of same-sex sexuality), and “coming with” (i.e., preserving one’s same-sex sexuality while maintaining parental harmony and/or interrogating heteronormative family structures) can be understood as different ways of working with sexual nonnormativity within a cultural system rather than imposing the Western closet paradigm of sexuality onto all cultures (Huang & Brouwer, 2018a, b). Such a forceful imposition, which has been made quite extensively in scholarship—particularly from the West—either consciously or less consciously, is a violent site of imperialism with enormous symbolic and material consequences, including racism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism (e.g., Ross, 2005; Yep & Lescure, 2014). As a potential amalgamation of two fairly independent areas of inquiry— critical intercultural communication and queer studies in communication— queer intercultural communication could be viewed as a field where tensions between cultural normativities and nonnormativities are examined, exposed, unpacked, understood, and interpreted in the context of relationalities in/ through differences starting with sexuality and its correlated vectors. 1 Because questions of meaning and difference are imbued with the dynamics of local and global power, queer intercultural communication is simultaneously a theoretical and political project. Our chapter explores some of the fundamental issues that, in our view, must be carefully considered when doing work in the emerging field of queer intercultural communication studies. To engage in this exploration, we first contextualize research on sexuality and intercultural communication. Next, we discuss and examine five fundamental themes, which we present as questions for the researcher to assiduously consider, in queer intercultural communication research. They are questions of (1) sexuality, (2) sexual systems, (3) sexual identity, (4) hegemony and power, and (5) cultural translation and legibility. We conclude with a discussion of the politics of research in queer intercultural communication studies by exploring their methodological implications and political consequences both locally and transnationally.

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RESEARCH ON SEXUALITY AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION In order to explore how sexuality is currently being researched in intercultural communication, generally speaking, we conducted a keyword and title search of the terms sex and sexuality in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (JIIC), widely regarded as the field of intercultural communication’s flagship journal. As of November 2018, searching JIIC for the term sex yielded 80 articles, and searching for sexuality yielded 70. To put this into perspective, other identity-related topics (e.g., gender, race) seemed to yield more articles, though not substantially more. For example, searching for gender and race yielded 119 and 140 articles, respectively. These findings, based on published works since the inception of the journal in 2008, seem to suggest that research in international and intercultural communication does not appear to have a major focus on identity and difference, more generally, and even less so on sex and sexuality, more specifically. Searching JIIC using the term queer with the terms sex and sexuality yielded very few results. As of November 2018, searching for the terms sex and queer yielded 21 articles, while searching for sexuality and queer yielded 23. Many of the same articles appeared in both searches. Some of these articles investigated queer sexualities in other regions of the world, often in relation to the United States (e.g., Bie & Tang, 2016; Goltz, Zingsheim, Mastin, & Murphy, 2016; Huang & Brouwer, 2018a; Nicholas, Ganapathy, & Mau, 2013; Oh & Lowe, 2017; Simmons, 2017; Yep, 2013); some explore queer sexualities within the United States, often in relation to multiple cultures and contexts (e.g., Abdi & Van Gilder, 2016; Eguchi, 2015; Moreman & Briones, 2018; Morrissey, 2013; Snorton, 2013); and some call for an increased focus on gender, sexuality, and queer/trans studies in the field of intercultural communication (Aiello et al., 2013; Alexander et al., 2014; Chávez, 2013; Halualani, 2016; Johnson, 2013; Willink, Gutierrez-Perez, Shukri, & Stein, 2014). If we focus exclusively on queer intercultural communication research rather than calls to encourage more work in this area, the picture is bleak—very little research exists. Even if we go beyond research published in JIIC (e.g., Abdi & Calafell, 2017; Calafell, 2017; Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Eguchi, Files-Thompson, & Calafell, 2018; Johnson, 2008; McCune, 2014), the picture is only slightly more promising. We conclude, based on the paucity of research to date, that as an area of study within our discipline, queer intercultural communication is just beginning to emerge. There are several potential reasons for the relatively little attention to sexuality in intercultural communication. First, intercultural communication scholarship seems to be reflecting the trends of the discipline itself, which has been slow to incorporate sexuality. For example, in a classic text on

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marital communication, Fitzpatrick (1988) examined, in great detail, marital interactions in terms of gender, power, conflict, compliance-gaining, and psychological views about marriage. In this extensive study, sex and sexuality were rarely mentioned. In many ways, intercultural communication research seems to reflect and replicate U.S. erotophobic (i.e., characterized by fear and discomfort about sexuality) cultural attitudes and beliefs of that time period. Although this appears to be changing, incorporation of sex and sexuality as fundamental components of culture and communication has been generally sluggish. A second reason for the slow uptake of sex and sexuality, particularly in terms of research on queer intercultural communication, could be attributed to a mixture of erotophobic and homophobic attitudes in the discipline. Yep (2003), for example, reported that it took more than six decades for one of the field’s leading journals, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, to publish its first article on homosexuality. Similarly, the investigation and representation of queer relationships, according to Elia (2003), have also been underrepresented and marginalized in the discipline. More recently, Chávez (2013) noted that in spite of developing a presence in the field of communication, particularly in the areas of cultural studies, rhetoric, media studies, and performance studies, research focusing on “lesbian, trans, or queer of color themes continue[s] to [receive] lukewarm reception . . . in communication journals” (p. 83). Such academic silences and scholarly marginalization continue to restrict and limit queer intercultural communication research. In addition, the study of queer intercultural communication is not only extremely complex (e.g., requiring a deep understanding of multiple cultural systems and questions of linguistic and cultural translation), but it also appears that there are no clear guidelines about how to tackle such complexities. Although we are not suggesting a definitive, standardized, and rigid set of criteria for doing queer intercultural communication research, it is useful and important to explore and examine issues that researchers should be cognizant of, attentive and responsive to, and judicious about in the process of conducting their investigations. Approaching such issues in the spirit of exploration and hoping that they might be generative of further dialogue and discussion to enhance, and perhaps accelerate, future research, we offer five issues that we believe are critical for the study of queer intercultural communication. FIVE CRITICAL ISSUES IN QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION In this section, we explore five fundamental issues in the study of queer intercultural communication. Framing them as questions for the researcher to

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constantly ruminate and judiciously consider, and recognizing that sexuality is socially constructed by power, geopolitics, and history, these five issues as defined and elaborated below are about (1) sexuality, (2) sexual systems, (3) sexual identity, (4) hegemony and power, and (5) cultural translation and legibility. Although we are discussing them separately for purposes of clarity, they are interrelated and, in many ways, interdependent. For example, cultural conceptions of sexuality influence the social organization of sexuality (i.e., sexual system and sexual hierarchy), how cultural members view themselves in society (i.e., sexual identity), which conceptions of sexuality become dominant in a cultural community (i.e., hegemony and power), and which views of sexuality are understood and deemed legitimate across cultural contexts (i.e., cultural translation and legibility). Finally, we recognize that there are innumerable, and potentially limitless, cases across geopolitical regions and historical periods that we could draw on, which are well beyond the scope of this project. As such, our examples are primarily intended to illustrate the discussion of these five critical issues. 2 The Question of Sexuality Although conceptions of sexuality appear relatively simple and straightforward to many, they are, in reality, extremely complex (Weeks, 2010). This question calls our attention to how sexuality is conceptualized in a particular cultural context. Such conceptualizations could include a wide range of ideas about sexuality—for example, what it means now and what it meant in the past; what it entails in a particular community and time period; how it should be manifested and expressed in the social domain; how it is experienced and inhabited; how it functions in people’s lives locally and transnationally, among many others—that are intricately connected to power, geopolitics, and history (Foucault, 1978/1990; Weeks, 2010). As such, sexuality is not solely the domain of the individual; it is thoroughly social and resolutely cultural. As a sociocultural construction, conceptualizations of sexuality are produced and constituted by the workings of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1978/1990). For example, knowledge of sexuality produces particular types of sexual beings (e.g., the homosexual), which are, in turn, governed and regulated by power, such as cultural norms (e.g., antihomosexual attitudes) and the state (e.g., laws against homosexuality). Conversely, power, such as the illegality of homosexuality, further produces knowledge about homosexuality, such as the mental health status and “deviant” tendencies of homosexuals. In short, power and knowledge operate in a seemingly endless loop to produce conceptualizations of sexuality. Foucault elaborates:

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Chapter 1 Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct: Not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement of discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power. (1978/1990, pp. 105–106)

Such strategies include normalization and the creation of new social categories. Normalization, or the process of producing and reproducing an all-encompassing standard that is deemed natural and unquestionable, is one major strategy of knowledge and power (Yep, 2003). The idea that sexuality is about the stimulation of bodies, desires, and pleasures through direct genital contact between “opposing genders”—a penis entering a vagina—has become normalized and hegemonic in current conceptualizations of sexuality in a number of cultural systems. 3 In addition to its phallocentrism (i.e., the centering of the male, such as the active penis penetrating a passive vagina), this pervasive—and seemingly universal—articulation of sexuality maintains and strengthens heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy (Yep, 2003). However, there are other cultural constructions of sexuality and pleasure that are not phallocentric. For example, Òsunality, an African-centered paradigm of sexuality, based on the Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion, presents an alternative view of life-affirming and pleasure-embracing sensuality. As a female-centered sexuality, Clarke (2016) explains, Òsunality provides a non-phallocentric narrative of sexual intercourse—i.e., a narrative that sheds the bond of privileging the male member. In this context, women are positively affirmed, and the vagina is perceived as an important organ. In Òsunality, agency is assigned to the vagina, which is absent in western notions of the erotic. . . . In other words, it is not a penis that conquers a vagina, but instead a vagina that surrounds a penis and demands its surrender. (p. 83)

This paradigm suggests that sexuality does not necessarily have to be phallic (i.e., revolve around a penis). However, Clarke (2016) notes that Western cultural resistance to Òsunality is exemplified in the figure of the “devouring vagina” (p. 85), which conjures up fears of castration (i.e., loss of male power) in a patriarchal system. The direct genital contact model has been challenged by various sexual subcultures, including gays and lesbians (Weeks, 2016) or “same-sex practitioners” (Massad, 2007, p. 174) and bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism (BDSM) communities (Weiss, 2011), among many others. While continuing to be generally focused on genital contact, the former redefines sexuality by

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redrawing the boundaries of eroticism and sexuality (e.g., the anus as a site of same-sex pleasure). Further contesting hegemony, BDSM decentralizes sexuality from genital contact, which Foucault (1984/1996) calls “the desexualization of pleasure” (p. 384) to suggest its degenitalization or the process of moving away from the genitals as exclusive sites of pleasure, to focus on the entire surface of the body (e.g., the skin, anus, nipples) as erotic. As such, BDSM frees the body from organ specificity and its rigid attachment to gender in a highly communicative environment of safety and consent; for example, gender and sexual orientation of one’s sexual partner may become less important prerequisites for sexual arousal and excitement (Weiss, 2011). Through a wide range of sexual practices that could include rope or leather bondage, verbal and/or physical discipline, fantasy scenarios, domination and submission, inducement of pain and other sensations, use of objects and toys, fetishes, leather sex, power exchange, and role plays, among others, BDSM expands conventional notions of sexuality, which, according to Foucault (1984/1996), lead to the invention of “new possibilities of pleasure” (p. 384). Finally, use of communication technologies further enhances interaction between BDSM partners (e.g., negotiation of fantasy scenarios) and increases disinhibition (e.g., perceptions of risk associated with expressions of new desires) (Rubinsky, 2018). The increasing availability of new communication technologies, locally and globally, has expanded conceptualizations of sexuality to go well beyond direct physical contact to the realms of the virtual. Indeed, cybersex, or sexuality without the presence of physical bodies and the limitations of physical proximity, has become widespread in numerous settings (e.g., Döring, Daneback, Shaughnessy, Grov, & Byers, 2017; Lemke & Weber, 2017). Because cybersex transcends cultural and geopolitical boundaries, the potential for accelerating intercultural contacts and the diversification of meanings of sexuality imbued with local and global—in other words, glocal—meanings has increased. However, such contacts also have the potential to advance hegemonic Western conceptions of sexuality (Yep, Lescure, & Allen, 2016). Finally, the proliferation of online gaming further pushes current views of sexuality to the possibility of sexualities without bodies (Valkyrie, 2011). As different conceptualizations of sexuality emerge and compete for hegemonic status—in the form of normalization described earlier—in a cultural system, another strategy of knowledge and power is through the creation of new social categories related to sexuality. With a focus on male homosexuality, Foucault (1978/1990) explains, As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a

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Chapter 1 morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. (p. 43)

Through the workings of knowledge and power, sexual acts (e.g., sodomy) became an all-defining, all-determining, and all-encompassing component of personhood (e.g., who an individual is in a society). Continuing to focus on the male homosexual, Foucault further elaborates: [His sexuality] was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. . . . The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species. (1978/1990, p. 43)

To put it differently, a new social category emerged: the homosexual as a modern sexual identity in Western cultures. Years later, heterosexuality, through a tumultuous history, became a normal and normative sexual identity, thus giving birth to the modern Western homosexual/heterosexual binary framework (Katz, 1995). However, as we discuss later, not all cultures assign meanings to erotic practices that become constitutive of identity and personhood. For example, Arab societies have, according to Whitaker (2006), “been more concerned about sexual acts and roles than with sexual identities” (p. 206). Further, as we explore next, not all cultures endorse the Western sexual system based on the homosexual/heterosexual binary. The Question of Sexual Systems In simple terms, this question refers to the ways cultural systems create and re-create sexual hierarchies. In the context of globalization, local and global hierarchies and understandings of sexuality interact, which ultimately constructs intricate sexual systems (Binnie, 2004). A sexual system, in our view, is a socially constructed and fluid—yet generally discernible—collection of narratives, discourses, and ideologies about sexuality as well as a framework for interpreting and making sense of sexuality within a specific cultural and historical context. For example, the normative sexual system in the United States tends to emphasize identity in relation to sexuality, whereas the normative sexual system in Mexico tends to emphasize sexual roles and practices (Almaguer, 1998; Carrillo & Fontdevila, 2014; Yep et al., 2016). As is generally the case with the transnational flow of cultural ideologies, the meanings of sexuality do not travel evenly across cultural contexts. Understandings of sexuality emanating from “developed” cultures, globally speaking, will likely influence “developing” cultures’ understandings of sexuality more than the other way around (Yep et al., 2016). Additionally, sexual

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systems change over time and through contact with other discourses and systems (Carrillo, 2017). Thus, Mexico’s normative sexual system as described above is likely to change through contact with other sexual systems, such as the normative U.S. sexual system. In this section, as we cite scholarship outlining sexual systems in the United States, Mexico, and various countries in the Middle East, we do not argue that the sexual systems we describe are the only ones that exist within that space, that the normative status of these sexual systems is not contested, that these systems are not themselves contested, that these systems are unchanging, and that people within a specific cultural context will necessarily understand their own sexuality according to the logics of these systems or the ways they are described in scholarship (Hames-Garcia, 2011). The normative sexual system in the United States, according to Almaguer (1998), organizes sexuality according to object choice. In such a system, individuals’ sexuality is labeled and interpreted by comparing their sex and gender identities to those of whom they desire and/or engage in sexual acts with (Yep et al., 2016). As Peña (2010) puts it, “A man who chooses to have sex with another man is ‘gay’ or homosexual while a man who desires to have sex with a woman is ‘straight’” (p. 755). Carrillo and Fontdevila (2014) argue that, in the context of object choice, “All men who engage exclusively in sex with men are presumed to be ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ regardless of their femininity or masculinity, or whether they are receptive or insertive during anal intercourse” (p. 922). Almaguer (1998) contrasts object choice with the normative sexual system in Mexico, which he argues organizes sexuality according to sexual aim. Some researchers describe this sexual system as existing in other cultures as well (see, e.g., Clark et al., 2013; Peña, 2010). In systems organized according to sexual aim, a person’s sexuality is categorized and understood in relation to specific erotic practices (Yep et al., 2016). For example, the sexualities of two men engaging in penetrative sex will be understood differently according to whether the man was engaging in activo (i.e., penetrative), pasivo (i.e., receptive), or internacional (i.e., versatile—referred to as moderno in Peru) practices (Almaguer, 1998; Clark et al., 2013; Peña, 2010; Yep et al., 2016). In the context of sexual aim, it is possible for men to engage in same-sex sexual practices without being perceived as homosexual, whereas this would likely not be the case in the context of object choice. Additionally, Alonso and Koreck (1999) argue that, according to the logic of sexual aim, the masculinity and sexuality of a man who engages in activo practices tend not to be diminished or stigmatized. Conversely, men who engage in pasivo practices tend to be stigmatized, pitied, and ridiculed (Alonso & Koreck, 1999; Carrier, 1985; Yep et al., 2016). Finally—and importantly—Carrillo (2017) contends that the idea of a fixed and homogeneous “Mexican sexual system” (p. 61) and the activo/pasivo model being applicable to all queer

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sexual contexts are flawed interpretations. Instead, he argues, as do Clark et al. (2013), that sexual systems are complex and consist of multiple understandings, which often exist simultaneously. In an exploration of queer sexualities across several cultures in the Middle East, Dunne (1998) describes a sexual system that, in some ways, resembles sexual aim in that it tends to understand sexuality in relation to power and gender. Dunne argues, “In Turkey, Egypt, and the Maghrib, men who are ‘active’ in sexual relations with other men are not considered homosexual; the sexual domination of other men may even confer a status of hypermasculinity” (p. 10). Additionally, he argues that “sexual relations in Middle Eastern societies have historically articulated social hierarchies, that is, dominant and subordinate social positions: adult men on top; women and slaves below” (p. 8). Illustrating the role of power in relation to gender and sexuality, Dunne (1998) describes an interaction that he had with an Egyptian man in the mid-1990s who, in response to hearing news about Bill Clinton’s proposed end to the ban on homosexuals in the U.S. military, asked why the president “wanted to ruin the American army” by admitting those “who are not men or women.” When asked if “those” would include a married man who also liked to have sex with adolescent boys, he unhesitatingly answered “no.” For this Egyptian, a Western “homosexual” was not readily comprehensible as a man or a woman, while a man who had sex with both women and boys was simply doing what men do. (p. 9)

Dunne’s research is not without its criticism. Massad (2007) problematizes Dunne’s universalizing claims about a singular sexual system in the “‘Middle Eastern’ society” (p. 169). Additionally, Massad characterizes Dunne’s approach as advancing ethnocentric judgments about non-Western sexual systems through a decidedly Western lens. Without citing Middle Eastern scholars or even other scholars of color, Dunne seeks to demonstrate how Middle Eastern society, unlike Western society, is where “non-egalitarian” sexual relations predominate and where sexuality adheres to a specific “notion of gender” (2007, p. 169). Dunne argues that for those reasons, a large number of gay men seek refuge in the West. Thus, he calls for “queering” the Middle East in order to put an end to those conditions. In response to these types of arguments, Massad (2007) argues that Western discourse about cultures in the Middle East “both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist, and represses same-sex desires and practices that refuse to be assimilated into its sexual epistemology” (p. 163). The Question of Sexual Identity Intricately connected to knowledge and power and the social organization of sexuality, this question calls attention to the degree sexual acts become con-

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stitutive of personhood (i.e., identity). As Hames-Garcia (2011) argues, “[Identities such as straight, lesbian, and gay] express a theoretical understanding of a person’s relationship to the organization of the social world along the lines of gender, sexuality, and power” (p. 73). Thus, the very concept of sexual identity can be understood to be culturally and historically specific. For example, Massad (2007) argues that, in the context of certain cultures in the Middle East, the sexual practices that a person might engage in do not necessarily bestow on that person a specific identity label such as “gay” or “lesbian.” In this section, we more fully examine these dynamics in relation to literature that focuses on queer sexualities in Japanese and South African cultural contexts. According to McLelland (2000), the concept of gay identity exists in Japanese culture but tends to manifest differently there than in the United States. While sexual identity—especially nonnormative sexual identity—is typically perceived as a major element of a person’s selfhood in the United States, this may not be the case in Japanese culture. In this context, according to Lunsing (1997), “Sexual preference is generally not seen as a feature that determines one’s personhood more than partially” (p. 285). Expanding upon this, McLelland (2000) conducts interviews with “Japanese same-sex desiring men,” noting that Despite experiencing their primary sexual impulse as directed towards other men, [these men] did not necessarily rule out marriage to a female partner. It became clear that the Western discourse of “gay identity” deployed by some researchers was insensitive to the ambiguity that many of my Japanese informants reported. (p. 464)

Additionally, McLelland cites two Japanese same-sex-desiring men who wrote to an online advice page. The first man wrote: At present I’m wondering about getting married to a woman. Although I don’t have a partner who wants to marry me, when I think about my parents and social standing etc. of course I think I want to get married. But, even if I do get married, I don’t think my sexual interests will change. When I bring up this kind of topic with my gay friends, they often say such things as “it would be a shame for your partner.” But it’s not that I want to have a fake marriage [gisoo kekkon]; I’m confident that I can treasure [daiji ni shite] and love [ai suru] my female partner. But it would be unreasonable to stop dating guys completely. (p. 465)

The second man wrote, “For a man and a woman to get married, form a household (katei) and bring up children, is the greatest happiness . . . [I am afraid that] solely because of my sexual desire [seiyoku no tame dake] I must live alone without getting married” (p. 645). For McLelland, these two exam-

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ples demonstrate that these writers do not perceive sexuality as being necessarily central to their personhood. Adding to this, Suganuma (2012) describes some of the queer activist strategies employed by members of OCCUR (Japan Association for the Lesbian and Gay Movement) as they fought against homophobia in Japan in the 1990s. Suganuma notes that OCCUR’s activism was substantially informed by U.S. queer activist movements and their approaches to identity politics, though, unlike U.S. queer activist movements, the members of OCCUR did not construct sexuality as being central to their personhood. Suganuma argues that the members of OCCUR “deliberately wore a mask of ‘Western’ gay identity while leaving the subjectivity underneath tangibly undefined” (p. 139). Through this “masking,” the members of OCCUR were able to construct a strategically essential gay identity—therefore rendering it legible and useful for activism—while simultaneously avoiding constructing gay identity as holistically reflective of their personhood. In a South African cultural context, some sources—notably Donham (1998), Livermon (2012), and Yep (2013)—describe shifts in the understanding of sexual identity and gender identity as apartheid ended. Donham (1998) presents a case study of an activist, Linda, who was instrumental in the founding of GLOW—the Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand. Donham describes Linda as “a black man in his mid-thirties . . . [who] died of AIDS in Soweto, South Africa [in 1993]” (p. 3). At the memorial service, Linda’s father—a member of the Zionist church—castigated Linda’s affinity for Indian saris, effectively disciplining Linda for what was perceived as his nonnormative performance of gender and cultural identity. According to Donham, the members of GLOW who were present at the memorial interpreted Linda’s father’s comments as insulting and homophobic. Interestingly, Donham notes that “gay” as an identity label does not apply so straightforwardly to Linda’s earlier life experiences. Instead, “it was female gender . . . that made the most sense to Linda during his teenage years” (p. 7). Further, Yep (2013) notes, “As Linda grew up and began to engage in same-sex erotic relations, he followed the norms—cross dressing and sexual role-playing as the effeminate partner—of his township’s sexual culture” (pp. 121–122). Illustrating the change in how sexual identity was understood in the context of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, Yep explains, In apartheid South African towns, Donham reminds us, sexuality was defined by bodily performances of gender. The end of apartheid and the birth of a “free” South Africa brought a different sexual system—one based on sexual identity (e.g., gay, lesbian)—to these black townships. Although it was not adopted evenly or consistently, it was, around this time, that Linda became “gay”—an identity that gave Linda a new gender (male) and a new way of relating to his body. (2013, p. 122)

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Similarly, Livermon (2012) describes the emergent use of the terms “bisexual” and “double-adaptor”—a local term roughly corresponding to “bisexual” in Western discourses—in postapartheid South Africa by “both men and women who in previous years would not have adopted any kind of identity label to describe their sexual practices” (p. 311). Notably, Livermon argues that individuals in South African Black queer communities adopt this term even though the public at large might perceive their engagement with gender and sexuality as normative. Livermon characterizes this as a decidedly Black and queer engagement with identity, one that is highly fluid, antiheteronormative, and distinct from local South African understandings of “gay” and “lesbian.” The Question of Hegemony and Power As previously stated, ideas about sexuality circulate unevenly within and across cultures. To further unpack sexualities, it is important to consider the concepts of hegemony and power, which we define as the social, cultural, political, structural, and institutional resources and dominance of one identity, practice, or conceptualization over others. For example, hegemony and power manifest in the homosexual/heterosexual binary of Western sexuality. This binary positions heterosexuality as normative and normal in relation to its nonnormative and “unnatural” counterparts (e.g., homosexuality, asexuality, bisexuality); in this instance, the former category—heterosexuality—is afforded dominance, privilege, and normalcy (e.g., Yep, 2003). Similar to heteronormativity, homonormativity and transnormativity raise questions about the effect of hegemony and power in classifying and promoting the gay White cisgender man as the façade of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) communities while dismissing nonnormative queer and trans lives (e.g., Puar, 2007). Therefore, this question focuses our attention on how power makes some of these ideas dominant, even unquestionable, in specific settings, including local, national, transnational, and global contexts. Many ideas about nonnormative sexuality around the globe have been defined by Western academic and public discourses. In doing so, White, middle-class, cisgender, and U.S./ Western notions of sexuality have marginalized, erased, and made different cultural understandings of sexual practices, eroticism, and sexuality unintelligible—making these conceptions into transnational weapons of colonialism and imperialism (e.g., Chávez, 2013; Massad, 2007; Puar, 2007; Ross, 2005). In this section, we first offer a contextualization of how heteronormativity, nationalism, and orientalism constitute the bedrocks of hegemonic sexuality as they ground the understanding and meaning of which sexualities are considered to be “deviant” or “normal.” After this, we provide two examples—in

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South African (Lesotho) and Native American communities—of nondominant sexualities. To begin with, the promulgation of “gay rights” rhetoric as a universalist humanist project is an invention of powerful Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to discipline and control Middle Eastern bodies, which is considered a form of sexual orientalism (Massad, 2007). According to Said (1978), orientalism is a way of imagining, exaggerating, and distorting differences of Eastern cultures as compared to those of Europe and the United States. In the case of European colonialism of the Middle East, orientalism has provided a rationale for European supremacy, invasion, exploitation, and discipline of the Eastern “barbaric” and “inferior” bodies. Constructing Eastern men as the exotic, backward, uncivilized, and sexually deviant Other provoked Western men’s homoerotic fantasy of Middle Eastern sexuality (Boone, 1995). Further, Boone (1995) contends, “the fact remains that the possibility of sexual contact with and between men underwrites and at times even explains the historical appeal of orientalism as an occidental mode of male perception, appropriation, and control” (p. 90). While Boone (1995) unpacks the notion of sexual orientalism in the context of Europe and the Middle East, Puar (2007) propels this conversation of sexuality in the United States by tracing the emergence of homonationalism—the idea of how queerness is incorporated into a nationalist and U.S. imperial project. Specifically, Puar critiques how homonationalism associates promilitary and patriotic ideologies with LGBTQI rights and how these discourses are then deployed by the U.S. government to show liberal openness toward homosexuality as a means to justify its violent intervention in the sexually oppressive Middle East. These European and U.S. interventions have shifted the indigenous interpretations of sexuality and desire from embracing homoerotics to complying with the West’s idea of heteronormalcy (Boone, 1995). Therefore, in this section, we offer two examples of indigenous sexualities that have been made almost unintelligible by the dynamics of Western hegemony and power. In the South African country of Lesotho, Gay (1986) reports on young girls who cultivate intimate relationships with older women, called mummybaby within the culture. An important aspect of such relationships is the experience of same-sex sexuality. Older women perform the roles of mentors for younger girls and provide emotional support to those who are both married and unmarried. These intimate friendships continue as the former baby becomes a mummy and starts to mentor other girls about sex, relationships, and other aspects of traditions, even if she is married to a man. These relationships are generally accepted in the culture and can either replace or complement heterosexual unions. As such, they reflect a conceptualization of female sexuality that is far removed from contemporary Western understandings of sexuality.

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A second example is Callender et al.’s (1983) study of the Native American berdaches, which refers to people who transcend their biological sex to undertake the identity of another sex. In many ways, these individuals transcend dichotomous Western conceptions of gender (e.g., female, male) and sexuality (e.g., homosexual, heterosexual). Commonly understood as members of the culture’s social and religious structure, berdaches have been viewed as fulfilling a spiritual calling. Because of this, they are not culturally stigmatized. In terms of intimacy, some berdaches celebrate same-sex relationships while experiencing interactions with other genders. In contrast to this conceptualization of Native American sexuality, Wilson (1996) critiques how European and U.S. anthropologists imposed the term berdache on indigenous groups. Not only did these Western academics provide a categorization of indigenous American sexuality but they also concluded that identities such as race, gender, and sexuality develop independently from one another. Instead, Wilson argues, many Native Americans have an understanding of identity that embodies several of these categories simultaneously. For instance, several lesbian, gay, and bisexual Native Americans identify as “two-spirit people” (Wilson, 1996, p. 304). Based on her lived experience as a two-spirit Swampy Cree woman, Wilson affirms that the “two-spirit identity is rarely recognized in the mainstream lesbian and gay community unless it is accompanied by romantic notions that linger from the concept of berdache” (1996, p. 313). This multifaceted construction of sexuality challenges traditional European and U.S. identity models and invites us to think about identity as being more contextual in terms of one’s culture and community. The “two-spirit” identity, then, offers an alternative account to present-day Western typologies of sexual personhood. In our above-mentioned examples, there is a clear conceptualization that indigenous sexualities are diverse and do not correspond to the common framework of White, cisgender, middle-class, U.S. American/Western sexualities. It is also important to note that the diversity of sexualities within these cultures was largely accepted and celebrated until the introduction of European American cultural views, practices, and ideologies. As a result, a number of cultures have suffered from the imposition of Western hegemonic views of sexuality. The Question of Cultural Translation and Legibility Addressing issues of how cultural perspectives and practices associated with sexuality circulate locally and transnationally, this question focuses on the process of meaning making across cultural systems (i.e., translation) and the subsequent reception of these systems (i.e., legibility). Surveying sexuality across cultures is important in emphasizing localized specificities to decenter the Anglo-American conceptual focus on “otherness” and “differences” in

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favor of new attention to localized histories and contexts. The decentralization of this Western focus allows for a nuanced understanding of the meanings of sexual identity and the multitude of words used to identify nonnormative sexualities in non-Western contexts. To illustrate the complexity of how sexuality is viewed and translated via and/or beyond Western contexts, we turn to the first Bollywood movie to discuss female same-sex sexuality in India, Fire, which was released in 1996 by the Indian Canadian director Deepa Mehta (Mahn & Watt, 2014). Ironically, the movie was criticized by Indian audiences for its apparent privileging of European American perspectives on sexuality. The critique was mainly surrounding the use of the word lesbian, as it was deemed Western and elitist. However, several scholars have been revisiting the movie and arguing that it is a representation par excellence of Indian female sexuality and intimacy and, while the Western word lesbian should be replaced, the representation of Indian women was powerful and deserves celebration (Mahn & Watt, 2014). The debate that this movie created in India is a strong example of how conceptualizations of sexualities are translated across cultures. In this section, we explore the relationship between language, culture, and identity in meaning making and circulation. To further unpack our inquiry of cultural translation and legibility, we offer three different examples by Middle Eastern scholars who complicate the notions of sex, sexuality, language, and culture. Communities in the Middle East and North Africa have historically seen sexuality as a fluid identity and navigated their interpellations outside of Western binaries, which have been particularly associated with modernity (Najmabadi, 2014). In her book Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards, Najmabadi (2005) illustrates how the shifting cultural and linguistic definitions of gender and the changing normative meanings of sexual desire in the 19th century were central to the conceptualization of Iranian modernity. Challenging Iranian modernity’s heteronormalization of all gender and sexual categories to the Western binaries of masculine/feminine and straight/gay, respectively, Najmabadi (2005) argues that Iranian modernity’s gender and sexual apprehensions were expressions of male anxiety—the initiation of modern thought in Iran had so far been interrelated with the displacement of the “sex troubles” of “pre-modern homosocial-homoerotic Iranian-Islamic cultures” (p. 25). In the same vein, in premodern Iran, beauty was ungendered, and gender differences were not read through a “template” of sexuality. This point is illustrated through the gender positionalities of the “men without beards,” namely, the amrad (a beardless, adolescent, male beloved) and amradunma (an adult man who makes himself look like an amrad, wishing to be an object of desire for adult men). The visibility of male-male practices in the “heterosocial-heterosexual” eye of European modernity resulted in perceiving premodern Iranian culture as abnormal and backward (Najmabadi, 2005, p. 52).

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As a result, in the mid-19th century, Iranian modernity embraced this normative assumption, “closeted” the amrad into the premodern, and blamed “homosexual desire” on the social practice of “women’s seclusion” and “gender segregation” (Najmabadi, 2005, pp. 63–64). The heteronormalization of sex became a condition of “achieving modernity” and called for the heterosocialization of Iranian society, resulting in the denial, humiliation, and feminization of the amrad (Najmabadi, 2005, p. 54). Finally, Najmabadi notes that, in examining Iranian amrad sexuality, it becomes imperative to recognize that translations of the amrad cannot be located in Western accounts. Expanding on Najmabadi’s argument, Habib (2007) reports that lesbian desires, relationships, and sexual practices not only existed historically in the Middle East but also were not seen as transgressive, as they are today. Accordingly, translated works on sexualities of the Middle East might ignore the diversity of sexual orientations. By providing analyses of various texts and erotic literature from medieval Arabia, Habib (2007) reveals a language and a tolerance that was eventually replaced by severe moral condemnation beginning in the 13th century. Offering texts from the early medieval period, she describes women who prefer women not burdened with the negative religious and social critiques of such women found in later periods. Habib (2007) notes that Islam—as a religious, political, and social system—and/or Middle Eastern cultures have not necessarily viewed homosexuality as detrimentally “deviant”; hence, to assume that “Middle Eastern” sexuality is unchanging is just another case of essentialism. Through an analysis of contemporary representations of female homosexuality in novels, literary criticism, and film primarily from Lebanon and Egypt, Habib (2007) shows the historical and cultural shifts of sexual practices, desires, and identities in the region. As such, women who enjoy sexual encounters with other women exclusively have been acknowledged throughout the Islamic period in various texts, but changing notions about sexuality over time have altered the discussion and shaped arguments about the nature of female sexuality and same-sex love across eras. Following the steps of Habib’s (2007) linguistic analysis, Almarri (2018) provides close readings of the “gendered” and “queer” Arabic terminologies to offer a new linguistic platform for critical scholars as well as communities fighting against hegemonic structures. Through an analysis of the Arabic terms khunthā, mukhannath, and khanīth, Almarri (2018) offers a new resistive lens to understanding identities in neocolonial settings based on a transhistorical grounding. Khunthā, mukhannath, and khanīth are representations of people “who inhabit their bodies in the in-betweenness and margins of gender, sex, and sexuality in ways that may be understood at times as nonheteronormative and other times as non-cisnormative” (Almarri, 2018, p. 99). Noting the epistemic violence endured through the translation of these

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terminologies by Western scholars, Almarri (2018) reinvents the translated works in regard to vulnerable identities by giving readers an opportunity to see the ways that Arabic conceptions of khunthā, mukhannath, and khanīth were created to showcase multiplicities of identity performances and agencies. These translations were also used as a site to fight against normative adoptions of modernity by the newly formed Arab states. This linguistic analysis refutes the orientalist idea that gender nonconformity and homosexuality are foreign to Arab lands and exclusive to Western civilizations. Further, Almarri (2018) exemplifies finding home and identification in Arabic language through his narrative: Early enough in my adolescence, the internet became a social space safe enough for my self-understanding and for rejecting the heteronormative possibilities of my future. . . . Most of these online spaces were in English by default. . . . At some point, as I began to participate in online translation work, I tried to find people like me who described themselves in Arabic terminology. . . . Eventually I found a chatroom under the channel name #makhanith. . . . So I ended up spending most of my time there having random conversations. . . . These conversations were almost exclusively in Arabic, and this is how I learned the LGBT community’s terminologies used in my variety of Arabic. (p. 98)

Thus, while it is inevitable to avoid the hegemony of the English language, the author’s work on translation proves that people can also belong in their own cultural and linguistic spaces. To illustrate how attending to cultural particularities is crucial when discussing sexualities, we can also analyze Ricky Martin’s 2014 concert in Morocco. While performing his hit song “She’s All I Ever Had” at the 13th Mawazine World Rhythms Festival in Rabat, Martin—who publicly came out as gay—switched the pronoun from “she” to “he” in a protest of the country’s antigay law (Strasser, 2014). While Western audiences praised Martin’s performance as an act of resistance, his message was ineffective, as it did not translate into the Moroccan cultural context. Linguistically, both male and female singers in the Arab world use pronouns “she” and “he” interchangeably to describe their lovers (Habib, 2007). Because linguistic boundaries are malleable in Arabic, the switching of pronouns did not have any resonance with Arab audiences as it was seen as normative rather than transgressive. This serves as an important reminder for Western audiences to consider cultural translations before imposing terminologies onto other cultures. As underscored by the works of Najmabadi, Habib, and Almarri, it is imperative that studies provide concrete textual and bodily contestations in one’s native languages in order to create meanings specific to the cultural context of the society.

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THE POLITICS OF RESEARCH IN QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION In this chapter, we have elaborated on some of the fundamental issues that we believe must be carefully considered when doing work in queer intercultural communication studies. We argue that attention to the five themes that we have discussed—the questions of sexuality, sexual systems, sexual identity, hegemony and power, and cultural translation and legibility—will aid researchers in exploring queer sexualities across cultures in ways that emphasize particularity and avoid generality, ultimately leading to more nuanced, supple, and complex research that challenges global hierarchies and ethnocentric Western sexual normativities. Before concluding our chapter, we explore some of the methodological implications and political consequences of research in queer intercultural communication locally and transnationally. Methodological Implications A number of scholars have urged us to rethink categories in queer research, and showed that early classifications and conceptualizations were based on a generalized monolithic identity of U.S., White, cisgender males and on perpetuated stereotypes of marginalized bodies—both within the United States and around the globe. In the pursuit of queer intercultural communication, there are several key methodologies that could support these efforts, such as ethnography (e.g., Alexander, 2005; Conquergood, 1991; Madison, 2007), autoethnography (e.g., Adams & Holman Jones, 2008; Pelias, 2004; Spry, 2011), performative writing (e.g., Calafell & Moreman, 2009; Madison, 1999; Pelias, 2005), and critical rhetoric (e.g., Holling & Calafell, 2011; McKerrow, 1989; Ono & Sloop, 1995). Thinking methodologically about queer intercultural communication requires us to ground our research in the historical and sociopolitical contexts of the communities we are studying. Davis, Nakayama, and Martin (2000) assert “cultures and cultural identities are not created in test tubes, but in material historical conditions, some identities are constructed in relation with some and at other times with other identities” (p. 534). Engaging in selfreflexivity about our own biases alongside the inclination to impose our own “truth” on others becomes crucial in offering a just and ethical representation of those groups. For these reasons, interventions in intercultural and queer methodologies are paramount in identifying diverse modes of scholarly investigations. Accordingly, we propose three important elements that can support the praxis of research on queer intercultural communication: (1) It is necessary to center the subjectivities of the individuals and the communities we are studying rather than representing them and/or speaking on their behalf; (2) it is crucial to examine everyday lived experiences to showcase the

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diversity and complexity of human life; and (3) it is useful to approach queer intercultural analysis with depth rather than breadth; conducting an in-depth focus will allow for specificity, avoid reductionism, and offer deeper and more nuanced knowledge of the subject. With these goals in mind, we make the case for queer intercultural methodologies that examine how power crosscuts our conceptualizations of sexuality and normativity. In doing so, it is imperative to remain particularly attuned to how nonheteronormative practices, desires, and categories of sex and sexuality are rendered intelligible in different historical and contemporary contexts. Political Implications Traditionally, intercultural communication scholars have focused on studying differences between cultural systems, while queer academics have highlighted the victimhood of White cisgender gay men. The critical turn in intercultural communication and queer studies opens the door to capturing the diversity of lived experiences of members in various sociocultural contexts. In the same vein, Yep (2013) invites us to approach research vis-à-vis “other bodies” through “embodied translation” to “queer/quare/kauer/crip/ trans bodies” in their respective cultural contexts (pp. 120–121). However, failure to address the erotophobic, neocolonial, neoimperial, and neoliberal implications of the lack of research in queer intercultural communication results in several political issues, such as the advancement of both normative understandings of sexualities as well as theoretical and practical imperial projects. Imperialism is, as Said (1993) reminds us, “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory” (p. 9). Viewing neoimperialism as the export of identities, Massad (2007) maintains that the imposition and the local appropriation of the homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy are directly connected to the universalization of a human-rights rhetoric that associates sexual rights with civilization and modernity. As such, Massad (2007) asserts that this global project of forcing Western assimilation by exporting the global model of LGBTQI is a neoimperial attempt to erase local histories and subjectivities. To exemplify the prevalence of imperialist tendencies, on September 6, 2018, India legalized same-sex relationships by putting an end to an imposed British colonial law, which prohibited “unnatural acts” (Westcott, 2018). Even though India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, the British control of Indian sexualities continued—legally—for another 71 years. In addition, this anti-LGBTQ law still presides over 31 former British colonies, highlighting Great Britain’s imperial influence and the ways in which local politics and understandings of modernity are translated and imposed globally (Westcott, 2018).

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Another example of local politics impacting global communities vis-à-vis sexualities is Puar’s (2007) critique of homonationalism, as we have previously described. Homonationalism is critical in understanding how contemporary governments use identities as a vehicle for imperialism and salvation (e.g., the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan). More specifically, Puar’s (2007) articulations include (1) White gay identity politics in the United States embracing promilitary, nationalistic, and conservative agendas, and (2) the marketing of pro-Zionist politics and “pinkwashing” as ways to describe Israel and the West as a “gay utopia” as a strategy employed to justify Arab dispossession. In this instance, such articulations advance political agendas that benefit the United States and Israel, respectively. Finally, in the case of Iran, human rights organizations mobilize around the figure of the Iranian transgender body in an effort to save them from the sexually oppressive Islamic Republic (Shakhsari, 2013). However, such efforts push forward anti-Iran legislation, which in turn jeopardizes the lives of those whom human rights organizations and academics are attempting to “save.” According to Shakhsari (2013), Shuttling between life and death, the transgender refugee is caught between biopolitics and necropolitics, where her body is produced and managed through religious, medical, psychological, and geopolitical discourses, and her death is sanctioned in the state of exception as a refugee . . . and as transgender. (p. 341)

Hence interrogating and transforming intercultural communication and queer studies through research on queer intercultural communication, with a focus on “embodied translation,” will allow us to meet subjectivities and understand them in their respective contexts (Yep, 2013, p. 124). CONCLUSION Since the emergence of social constructionism, sexuality has been widely defined as a cultural, geopolitical, and historical invention. The notion that sexuality is culturally constructed in time and space in a field of power relations has become conventional wisdom, with several decades of academic research in the humanities and social sciences supporting it. Since its emergence in the communication discipline, queer studies has focused on sexual nonnormativities and representations, and intercultural communication has concentrated on interactions within and across cultural systems and representations of culture. The time has come for these two areas to come together with their theoretical, methodological, and political wisdom to propel the study of queer intercultural communication—the examination of rela-

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tionalities in/through difference—forward, to improve the quality of life for sexually nonnormative cultural members locally and transnationally. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Discuss the notion that queer intercultural communication is about “relationalities in/through differences.” Can you think of an example—from personal experience or from mass media—of queer intercultural communication? How are those differences negotiated? Whose cultural point of view is more dominant, and what effects does this have? 2. What type of method(s) would you use to study queer intercultural communication? Why? Is it important for scholars to research their own culture in their own voices? Why? What might be some of the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? 3. Discuss the ways in which erotophobia, neoliberalism, and cultural imperialism affect local conceptualizations and embodiments of sexuality. Provide an example. How do views of sexuality move into mainstream culture? How do they get legitimized? 4. How do power and hegemony inform our understanding of sexuality and that which is considered “normal” in a culture? How are nonheteronormative practices, desires, and categories of sex understood in your own cultural community? Provide some examples. KEY WORDS • • • • • • •

Cultural Translation Queer Queer Intercultural Communication Relationalities Sexual Identity Sexual Systems Sexuality NOTES

1. Queer intercultural communication must be, in our view, deeply intersectional. In other words, it must attend to the intricate and simultaneous interplay and collision of multiple vectors of difference (e.g., conceptions of race, class, gender, etc. within a specific cultural context) through which meanings of sexuality emerge. As such, sexuality cannot be understood and examined by itself, or, to put it differently, it is always already constituted through relations with other forms of cultural difference. Gust dedicates his portions of the chapter to Yogi Enzo (2008–2018), whose irrepressible spirit animates this exploration, and Pierre Lucas, who con-

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tinues to fill my soul with his sweet presence and boundless love. In addition, Gust thanks Kristyn L. McKee for her research assistance. Fatima dedicates her portions to her grandmother, whose home in her heart gives her the strength to find words, and to Jad, who gives those words meaning. Ryan dedicates his portions of the chapter to Amelia Diedrich for her love and support. 2. In our selection of cases, we attempted to draw attention to published academic research—in English—from various regions of the world. As such, they should not be read as sole representations of those regions and cultures. 3. The gender binary that constructs “opposite sexes” (e.g., women, men) has been widely contested and discredited (see, e.g., Butler, 1990; Yep, Russo, Allen, & Chivers, 2017). Indeed, we maintain that there are multiple genders that are more aptly characterized as a galaxy rather than a binary (see, e.g., Yep, Russo, & Allen, 2015).

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Valkyrie, Z. C. (2011). Cybersexuality in MMORPGs: Virtual sexual revolution untapped. Men & Masculinities, 14(1), 76–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X10363256 Weeks, J. (2010). Sexuality (3rd ed.). London, England: Routledge. Weeks, J. (2016). What is sexual history? Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Weiss, M. (2011). Techniques of pleasure: BDSM and the circuits of sexuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Westcott, B. (2018, September 18). The homophobic legacy of the British empire. Retrieved from CNN website: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/11/asia/british-empire-lgbt-rightssection-377-intl/index.html Whitaker, B. (2006). Unspeakable love: Gay and lesbian life in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press. Willink, K. G., Gutierrez-Perez, R., Shukri, S., & Stein, L. (2014). Navigating with the stars: Critical qualitative methodological constellations for critical intercultural communication research. Journal of International & Intercultural Communication, 7(4), 289–316. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2014.964150 Wilson, A. (1996). How we find ourselves: Identity development and two-spirit people. Harvard Educational Review, 66(2), 303–317. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.2. n551658577h927h4 Yep, G. A. (2003). The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies: Notes on injury, healing, and queer world-making. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas, & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 11–59). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Yep, G. A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 118–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2013.777087 Yep, G. A. (2017). Further notes on healing from “The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 4(2), 115–122. https:// doi.org/10.14321/qed.4.2.0115 Yep, G. A., & Lescure, R. M. (2014). Kuaering “home” in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. In E. Patton & M. Choi (Eds.), Home sweat home: Perspectives on housework and modern relationships (pp. 167–182). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Yep, G. A., Lescure, R. M., & Allen, J. (2016). Intercultural same-sex relationships: Masculinities, sexualities, and communication across borders. In J. Manning & C. Noland (Eds.), Contemporary studies of sexuality and communication: Theoretical and applied perspectives (pp. 63–77). Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt. Yep, G. A., Russo, S. E., & Allen, J. (2015). Pushing boundaries: Toward the development of a model for transing communication in (inter)cultural contexts. In L. G. Spencer & J. C. Capuzza (Eds.), Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories (pp. 69–89). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Yep, G. A., Russo, S. E., Allen, J. K., & Chivers, N. T. (2017). Uniquely Glee: Transing racialized gender. In R. A. Lind (Ed.), Race and gender in electronic media: Content, context, culture (pp. 55–71). New York: Routledge.

Chapter Two

Revisiting a Letter for Someday Writing Toward a Queer Iranian Diasporic Potentiality Shadee Abdi

While much of the work produced in intercultural communication touches on the complexities of surviving within the sticky layers of our messy existences, it largely fails to include the experiences of many Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) individuals. Further, heteronormative texts continue to act as our primary sources of understanding and engaging with communication theory (Eguchi & Asante, 2016). Gutierrez-Perez (2017) writes that heteronormativity continues to act as “the invisible center and compulsory sexual bedrock of society . . . the quintessential force creating, sustaining, and perpetuating the erasure, marginalization, disempowerment, and oppression of sexual others” (p. 151). It is this very heteronormative standard that has acted as a barrier in need of narrative trespass (Abdi, 2014). This lack of scholarly representation is especially true for queer 1 Iranian American women and is demonstrated by the fact that little has been written about queer Iranian diasporic experiences within communication studies and the humanities and social sciences across the board (e.g., Abdi, 2014; Abdi & Calafell, 2017; Abdi & Van Gilder, 2016; Van Gilder & Abdi, 2014). For queer Iranian American women, the complex negotiation of sexuality alongside cultural and familial expectations becomes one area that requires further explication—particularly for queer Iranian women born and/or raised in the United States who often transgress normative family expectations yet are simultaneously understanding their sexual identities through familial and communal relationship maintenance. How, then, are queer Iranian American women making sense of their identities within these seemingly impermeable structures? How does the queer Iranian American narrative fit within the scope of queer intercultural 47

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communication more broadly? Eguchi and Washington (2016) maintain that “the hegemonic forces of power, oppression, and privilege minimize limit and discourage the intersectional potentiality of queerness” (p. 419). I argue for pushing back against those long-standing limitations. While the stories of queer Iranian Americans are often untidy, nuanced, and chaotic, they still must belong within the broader scope of queer intercultural communication. In the same vein, we must always remember that, for some, queerness continues to be undefined, unrefined, and unpredictable. As Ahmed (2014) asserts, “Sexual orientation involves bodies that leak into worlds: it involves a way of orienting the body towards and away from others, which affects how one can enter different kinds of social spaces” (p. 145). This liminal space must be understood contextually, making room for those whose stories often go unheard because they rarely get the chance to tell them. Simultaneously, “what we need to know is that queerness is not yet here, but it approaches like a crashing wave of potentiality” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 185). In this chapter, I move toward a more nuanced conversation about the potentiality of inclusion, with queer intercultural communication as the genealogy, the provider of context. More particularly, during that conversation, I move toward awareness of the complexities of being (in)visibly queer within both the Iranian/Iranian American communities as well as within a majority of queer/ queer of color contexts. It is imperative to transgress heteronormativity and homonormativity so that we can make space for other nuanced conversations about the realities of embodied simultaneity within queer intercultural communication. PERSONAL NARRATIVE IN QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION As a critical scholar and a queer Iranian American woman, power and the politics of my intersectional identities are always already a part of everyday interactions. For this reason, I share my story to evoke space making that calls for other such stories to be told. Adapting Calafell (2010), “I write to bear witness to experience” (p. 344). Though as Eguchi and Asante (2016) rightfully point out, “the sharing of personal narrative as knowledge building has been marginalized in the discipline of communication” (p. 173). Despite this marginalization, it is important to remember that personal narratives are a political method that challenges traditional forms of research by directly interweaving the personal into the political. Personal narratives are especially imperative for queer intercultural communication scholars writing about marginalized communities as a way of recounting and (re)storying experiences within broader social and global contexts:

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An individual’s story becomes meaningful through its narrative content, mode of narration, and the positionality of the storyteller in relation to the structure of relations and institutions constituting the surrounding context as in, for example, the state’s policies, conditions, and definitions of diversity and race. (Halualani, Fassett, Morrison, & Dodge, 2006, p. 74)

By shifting the researcher’s perspective away from “what is” to “what could be,” researchers are engaging with personal narrative as a means of opening the dominant spaces where marginalized communities are able to “disrupt, rewrite, and break free of master narratives” (Corey, 1998, p. 250). Moreover, the presentation of self and Others relies on a commitment by researchers to question systems of power that make sharing of certain stories impossible. By deconstructing the ways that we look at cultures and communities, critical communication scholars can begin to present more holistic accounts of what it means to exist in the world. Thus, the potential for personal narratives in queer intercultural communication to trouble longstanding conceptualizations of race-culture and to produce a new kind of cultural politics, wherein subjugated voices are valued, is limitless. Through sharing our narratives, queer intercultural scholars can use personal experiences to connect the public and private in an effort to do “something in a social world” (Langellier, 1989, p. 261). As Corey (1998) contends, “the personal narrative is one way of disturbing the master narrative, and through the performative dimensions of the personal narrative the individual is able to disrupt—and, dare I say rewrite—the master narrative” (p. 250). Much like embodied social justice work, personal narrative accounts for the possibilities that can transform and redefine preexisting and oft pervasive narratives. Alexander (2008) calls for scholars to privilege the voices of subjugated peoples to reimagine other ways of moving throughout the world, “articulating our visions of difference” (p. 104). Personal narrative works to disrupt and trouble traditional ways of knowing by giving space for subjective experiences that refuse to be quantified. But I want to be clear that this work is not intended to account for how all queer Iranian American women experience their identities in relationship to their families; instead, I will touch upon the underlying ideologies that have long stood in the way of our stories being told. This chapter uses personal narrative to encompass a broader conversation about queer identity in the Iranian diaspora. As Alimahomed (2010) challenges, “the invisibility of queer women of color is both a product of domination and also an unscripted resistance to ideologies about race, gender, sexuality. Their invisibility translates to a flexibility that challenges allegiance to any one space or political position, which offers room to maneuver” (p. 154). In this chapter, I utilize personal narrative (Calafell, 2004, 2009; Corey, 1998; Eguchi, 2011; Langellier, 1989, 1999; Madison, 1993,

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1999) to maneuver and extend the conversation about queer Iranian American identity and familial experience. In this chapter, I search for a queer Iranian diasporic potentiality by blending intersectionality and queer of color critique with personal narrative to privilege the experience of existing between two divergent worlds as influenced by my cultures, my family, and my everyday existence (Calafell, 2010; Madison, 1999). Like Eguchi (2011), whose research aims to connect “personal narrative and the socio-cultural, political, and historical aspects of the gay Asian cultural identity constructions” (p. 39), this work attempts to do the same with regard to the constructions of queer Iranian diasporic cultural identity. As critical communication scholars, we must continue to be vigilant in the pursuit of inclusivity and space making, so that those who may have never had the chance to tell their queer intersectional and intercultural stories can be heard. As Muñoz (2009) writes, “Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (p. 1). I hope that this work can highlight the potentiality and move toward the concrete possibility of a more holistic and inclusive queer intercultural communication as the genealogy. THE AFTERMATH My story started long before I knew I would write it. I only first began reading experiences that were similar to my own the day I entered my PhD program. My privilege and access to higher education, the community/family I had built and sustained, and the loving and patient mentorship I received opened up a world of voices, stories, and familiarities that finally made me feel like I was not the only person stuck in the liminal space between gender, culture, sexuality, and familial identities. Works by Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and others gave me life and allowed me to see the ways in which other queer of color scholars learned to survive. It was through Borderlands/La Frontera that I first began understanding the “fear of going home,” or the difficult negotiation of sexuality and family for queer women of color, most of whom “unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadow” (Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 42). I still remember the feeling of first reading Anzaldúa’s words and their subsequent reverberations echoing that “for the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality” (p. 41). And then I read This Bridge Called My Back, a book that gave voice to

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U.S. women of color coming to late 20th century social consciousness through conflict—familial and institutional—and arriving at a politic, a “theory in the flesh” (19), that makes sense of the seeming paradoxes of our lives; that complex confluence of identities—race, class, gender, sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and liberation. (Moraga, 2015, p. xix)

In many ways, it was these women who saved me from a lifetime of wondering what it meant to exist in a body subsumed in contradiction. Suddenly, my experiences made sense in the company of these queer women of color who were speaking to and against the structures that have so far made it all but impossible to escape the margins built to keep us out—even though, still, a part of my heart was left unfilled. In 2014, I published a piece titled “Staying I(ra)n: Narrating Queer Identity from within the Persian Closet,” in which I shared a personal narrative that concluded with a “Letter for Someday” (Abdi, 2014, p. 18). In that letter, I offered the reasons why I was unable to share my queer identity with my mother, and I outlined all of the obstacles that could not/would not/did not allow me to tell my mother that my queer identity was the reason behind so much of why I was who I had become. Uncertainty. Fear. Distance. It has been five years since the publication of that article, and it still the hardest piece I have ever written. I think about it often, particularly my decision to publish in an open access journal with my name attached—a decision filled with risks that I still go back and forth contemplating. I think about what it meant/means for myself and for my family, and what it would mean for community if it got into the wrong hands. Sometimes I think about it too much and have to stop, for fear of getting lost in a dangerous and destructive thought spiral made up of what-ifs. Can I ever go back? is a question soaked in guilt and grief that I ask myself often. Being a queer Iranian American is laden with those uncertainties. Iran is one of few countries where homosexuality remains illegal—where the ramifications of disclosing my sexuality publicly to myself and my family remain uncertain: “The Islamic Republic of Iran not only denies the existence of gays and lesbians but paradoxically considers homosexuality a capital crime” (Abdi, 2014, p. 4). Though in the context of the United States I am presented with more opportunity to more openly explore my sexuality, many of the same social and familial obligations persist. As described by Abdi and Van Gilder (2016), one of queer Iranian American women’s biggest fears when disclosing their sexualities is the potential for negative parental perception alongside the anxiety of possible ostracization from the Iranian community for both themselves and their parents. Moreover, for queer Iranian American women, identity negotiation is found to be contingent on parental perception, acceptance, support, and understanding of queer identity all to-

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gether (Abdi & Van Gilder, 2016; Abdi, 2014; Van Gilder and Abdi, 2014). Consequently, how parents understand their daughters’ sexuality (in relation to the Iranian social/cultural script) should be understood as a motivating source of feelings of shame, guilt, preservation of face, and collectivist thinking that impact queer Iranian American women’s practices. In the same vein, Kugle (2013) notes that while queer Muslims (importantly, not all Iranians or Iranian Americans identify as Muslim) often face difficulty coming to understand themselves in relation to their families, they often continue to experience deep feelings of love and devotion toward their parent(s): One pattern . . . that may surprise readers is the loving appreciation that transgender, lesbian, and gay children often feel toward their parents, despite the intense disagreements or coercion that they endure. This should caution us against seeing the formation of homosexual or transgender identity as a rejection of the family itself or as repudiation of one’s parents. To the contrary . . . many transgender, lesbian, and gay Muslims feel deep and abiding affection for their parents and a profound desire for their parents’ blessing, even if they are rejected, threatened, or ostracized by their families. (p. 11)

What Kugle (2013) underlines here is the complexity of individual versus collective relational negotiation for non-White families. Parents and families are not seen as the villains in these stories but rather as those who gave up their lives to provide better opportunities for their children. In other words, queer Iranian American women do not want to disappoint their parents, who have given up everything for the successes of their children. Since the publication of that article, my mother has read that letter, and our relationship has transformed into a work in progress, where each day we try just a little harder to understand each other. She questions.

I answer.

She struggles.

I struggle.

She bends.

I bend.

She loves.

I love.

And so, I use this opportunity, this chapter in this text at this time, to use personal narrative and narrative trespass to “break free of the dominant discourses that have continued to deny my identity and have instead attempted to tell my story for me” (Abdi, 2014, p. 8). This work serves as a continuation of my story, negotiating my family and my cultures, as part of the queer Iranian diaspora for the purpose of encouraging a queer Iranian diasporic potentiality within queer intercultural communication. She questions.

I answer.

She struggles.

I struggle.

Revisiting a Letter for Someday

She bends.

I bend.

She loves.

I love.

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A STORY (FOR NOW) It appears my whole life has been a series of negotiations about my identity—secrets I’ve kept from my community, my family . . . my mother. I am constantly in a state of flux, living on/over/in between the margins, moving fluidly through the many facets of my life that mark me as abject. I

am

exhausted.

I make room for my queer identity only in times where I am not forced to have to fully perform my Iranian identity. Oddly, I feel closer to my culture when I succumb to the pressures causing me to question just how attracted to men I am expected to be. I find myself attempting to reconcile whether these moments have been conditioned in me since childhood or if, instead, I have simply taught myself how to cope with my divergent identities as a means of survival. I am reassured that I am not alone when I read Cherríe Moraga’s (2000) words, “For a lesbian trying to survive in a heterosexist society, there is no easy way around these emotions” (p. 33). So then maybe I must compromise that it is a little bit of both. Conceivably, I have let the voices in my head telling me to get married before I (my body . . . my eggs) get too old drown out what little emotional energy I have left to spare. In any case, I question whether these concerns stem from the pressures of my family, who is pressured by their family, who is pressured by their government, who is pressured by a dangerously misguided interpretation of queer identity altogether: the “Western ‘disease.’” 2 I frequently question just how much of which culture I am supposed to reject . . . just to survive. I

am

exhausted.

While it seems that I am always in this perpetual state of flux, I remain certain of one thing: it is because of these questions that I continue to feel pressured to stay inside of this Persian closet (Abdi, 2014). I have come to learn that despite being reminded of the contrary, it doesn’t always “get better.” I realize now that for me, and for many queer people of color, “the closet” represents an arbitrary space used to place value on a normative performance of “authentic” queerness that is not only harmful but serves as an outright dismissal of the ways in which queer identity is/can be embodied when the utopic conceptualizing of “the closet” does not/cannot endure. Queerness in and of itself should be a resistive identity, one that gives leeway to those who make sense of their queer identities through performances that allow them to the navigate the world with a vernacular that makes sense for

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both individual and collective lived experiences. Like Calafell (2007), I know that “for decades, people of color have performed the trickster role to make do” (p. 429). So I must eventually concede to sitting in the uncomfortable reality that being a queer person of color means always already having to oscillate and negotiate one’s place within these distinctive worlds. For individuals trying to understand themselves within the collective, “authentic” means living a life exactly as they are living it. For myself, I use story and narrative trespass to better understand my place in all of the spaces I find myself . . . to simply exist (Abdi, 2014, p. 8). I am a queer Iranian American woman. I

am

exhausted.

I am also the daughter of a single mother who did everything in her power to ensure that I never had to question where I would sleep or where my next meal would come from. I owe my mother everything. I owe her honesty, but at what cost? Do I hide who I am and allow our relationship to grow further and further apart? Do I tell her the truth and risk losing her altogether? Like a flick of a light switch, I fluctuate between the U.S. voices in my head yelling, “It gets better. You’re her daughter. She has to accept you,” and the louder, more heavily accented Iranian voices that force me to empathize and understand by saying, “She grew up learning a different lesson. She’s known you only ever as one thing, and now you’ve changed everything. Don’t be selfish. Your story is also her story.” REWIND . . . I consider the risks of going back to Iran to see my family. I long to be with the ones I love most and, more than anything, I miss my grandmother. Conversely, I reflect on the alternative: turning my back—never telling them why I had to stop visiting or why I couldn’t bother to return the millionth missed WhatsApp call. Then I think about not being able to see my grandmother again, and my choice becomes clearer. I don’t tell them. It doesn’t make sense for them to know—not for my own well-being, not for my mother’s, and certainly not for theirs. So I guess that I am angry that I am lucky to even have that choice to begin with. As a U.S. citizen, I am privileged. I will never know what it's like to be a queer Iranian living in Iran. I will never know the struggle embedded in the negotiation of understanding the self through fear of a nation’s repercussions—though, inarguably, there are people domestically who feel similarly. But I will never know what it is like to have to move through the world, flesh and blood, breathing, speaking, listening as someone tells me that there is no one like me in my own country. To be told that I am

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A phenomenon. A monster (Calafell, 2015). Or, worse . . . that I simply do not exist. What I do know is what it is like to have those values instilled in your community, in your family. I do know what it is like to be described in ways that always end with “but. . . .” I do know what it feels like to know that by simply living your life, by making choices that should impact no one but yourself, you are risking the lives of those you love most. And so I think about queer of color scholars who write against the notion of queer monstrosity, like Gutierrez-Perez (2017), who assures me that “confronting externalized and internalized homophobia as queer people of color means remembering that we are not monsters, and it means remembering that we matter—and believing that we matter” (p. 151). I have to remember that my our stories matter, even when I am exhausted and spent and think there is no out there listening. REWIND . . . I am staring out my office window located on the first floor of Sturm Hall at the University of Denver, a building nestled precisely between the intersections of Gaylord and Race Streets, the irony of which does not escape me. My head feels heavy on my shoulders, perhaps signaling my need for sleep. I roll my neck and try to rub the exhaustion out of my eyes while I count the seconds between each breath I take. I look back to my computer screen and gaze intently on the brightly lit “confirm” button that has been staring back at me for the last hour and a half. Unexpectedly this time, I feel my pulse quicken. Before I can go through the list of pros and cons in my head for the thousandth time, my trembling hands cup the top of my wireless mouse, and I press down. “Fuck it. One more time.” I sigh in relief and close my computer. “I’m going home.” FAST FORWARD . . . I couldn’t breathe. Literally. The summer of 2014, the day before I was set to fly to Tehran, I was sitting in a hospital bed gasping for air that my lungs refused to produce. My face was burning, reflecting its scorching red hue, and was stained with the residual track marks of cold sweat and hot tears. My mother sat with me, wiping a damp compress over my forehead, humming to herself in worry. I remember studying her closely that warm July evening,

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differently than I had in years. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were filled with what can only be described as a mixture of unconditional love and inexplicable fear. I had never had a panic attack before. Anxiety, yes, but never like this. My mother had never seen me like this. And now we were here, together, not speaking. Silence drowning us both. And I know that she was terrified. Hours later, we leave the hospital. I struggle to find my balance with one fist clenched around a prescription for antianxiety medication while my mother tightly grasps my other hand in hers. I feel her squeeze gently to reassure me that there’s nothing to worry about—that she is not angry—that I am safe with her. I think to myself that this is the moment I wrote about years before, the one where I would finally have to tell her the truth (Abdi, 2014). She would have to understand. And if she couldn’t wouldn’t, I would be halfway across the world in a matter of hours anyway. So finally, while sitting beside each other in her fragrant, cigarette-scented 2001 Toyota Camry, I whisper, “Will you stop loving me if I tell you the truth?” She gives me that “confused mom” look that I have come to know so well, which forces me to turn away before I lose my nerve. I stare out the passenger side window, looking for a sign. Frozen in time. Eventually—though I don’t recall how many minutes later—I manage to stumble, “Maman, I have to tell you why this happened.” That evening, I learned that it is impossible to forget the sound of your mother’s heart break/ ing. TOWARD A POTENTIALITY OF INCLUSIVITY As a first-generation, queer Iranian American woman who has dedicated her life to this work, I selfishly hope to have conveyed the importance of including storied intersectional experiences not just in subfields that are known to embrace this dialogue (e.g., queer communication studies, women and communication, intercultural communication) but across the field. I hope to have laid groundwork for more nuanced research on (queer) MENA communities within communication studies. My hope for a queer Iranian diasporic potentiality and for a more nuanced and inclusive queer intercultural conversation asks us to commit to a deeper understanding of our commonalities and differences as queer people of color both globally and domestically, to instead move “toward the process of discerning the multilayered and intersecting sites of identity and struggle—

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distinct and shared—among women of color across the globe” (Moraga, 2015, p. xvi). And though there are attempts to write about sexualities in more holistic ways, Yep (2017) reminds us, “Although there have been gestures and attempts, nationally and globally, to include sexual minorities in recent years, the underlying social structures and foundations remain profoundly heteronormative” (p. 116). It is only through reading, listening, and understanding each other’s stories that we are able to push back against the structures that continue to erase/hide our stories. It is only through reading, listening, and understanding each other’s stories that we survive and create a lasting and empowering coalition for all queer folks of color transnationally. Like Lorde (2015), “I speak here as a woman of color who is not bent upon destruction, but upon survival” (p. 132). As someone who has had a history of oscillating between two homeplaces (the United States and Iran), I have come to better understand the ways in which queer normativity moves globally. One thing I have come to realize is the ways in which narrative allows us to create a vernacular for ourselves that privileges lived experiences that transcend borders. Writing the self is one way to connect our transnational and diasporic stories and move beyond the idea that gay White men are the only ones with stories to tell . . . are the only ones whose stories are worth listening to. Gutierrez-Perez (2017) maintains, “Auto/ethnographic performances of queer bodies of color challenge and critique the modern/ colonial gender system that maintains our intersectional bodies in a queer form of diaspora” (p. 149). Moraga (2015) says in the preface to the fourth edition of This Bridge Called My Back, “At home, amongst ourselves, women of color ask the political question, what about us? Which really means: what about all of us?” (p. xix). I still find myself asking this question as I am sure many other queer folks of color continue to as well. And while I have hope for a queer potentiality that includes global, transnational, international, and diasporic stories that so often go unheard, I have to believe that we are ready for it—as a discipline, as a collective, as a culture. And if we are not ready, I have to keep pushing forward anyway. In the end, what I have come to learn in my years of yearning for an answer to a question that I know will never come, is that I must learn to be comfortable living without one. In the title of their groundbreaking book, Holling and Calafell (2011) ask, “Somos de Una Voz? [Are we of one voice?].” I don’t know. Maybe not. But what I do know is that our queer Iranian American stories cannot and should not ever be assumed to be the same, and I wonder whether assumption could even exist without a starting point. Our stories are nuanced, they are particular, and they are ours to tell. There is no real summation of an “authentic” queer Iranian American experience, because authenticity is language used to make others who have historically been absent in the master narrative feel inferior. Our invisibility is how oppressors maintain power, and it is when we show up, no longer as foot-

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notes, but as people—with names, and histories, and families that look “different”—that we begin to take back our power and reclaim our stories for ourselves. Like Holling and Calafell (2011), I have come to learn that the purpose of this research has never been to provide a solution. Rather, it is to problematize how we begin to conceptualize our identities in the first place. It is in that space where we can finally make room for future research on queer intercultural communication and the creation of a queer Iranian diasporic potentiality. FAST FORWARD . . . “I love you, Shadee joon. No matter vhat,” my mom tells me as she and my sister drop me off at the ever-crowded Southwest terminal at San Francisco International Airport. She’s been telling me this more often. And though “I love yous” are not an uncommon exchange between my mother and me, this one felt just a little bit different. Like with those three words, she could relay everything she has been feeling since I told her, almost three years ago. We don’t talk about it much, but she asks me questions now: sometimes clarifying inquiries about queer identity, sometimes questions about whether I’m sure, sometimes they’re about whether or not I’m dating (though when my answer is no, I hear the audible sigh of relief as she turns her head back toward the TV). I still get frustrated. She still gets frustrated. Because my answers are never what I think know she is hoping for. Our new relationship is a work in progress where cultural codes are reshaped for both of us—because they have to be. And, I’m noticing changes. Like when my aunts call from Iran and ask whether I have found a suitable husband, she now replies, giving me a knowing smile, “I don’t know. Vhy don’t you ask her?” She leaves it up to me to give my rehearsed response: “Khaleh [auntie], I’m focused on work right now. I don’t have time to think about any of that.” She rubs my back as I groan, knowing full well that that excuse will not be viable for much longer. Or a few years ago, while watching an entertainment gossip show speaking about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s divorce, “Maman, isn’t that so sad that they got divorced?” And her response, a question more telling than any other she could have asked, “Well, vat vould you do if your vife told you dat she vas in love with somevon else?” It was the first time she had ever said “wife” in reference to my future. I froze, my body physically unable to process what had just come out of her mouth. She looked at me for a few moments before breaking out into a laugh that has always filled my heart with indescribable joy and said, “Or husband, vatever.”

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Still, this feels different. Standing here, saying good-bye to her, knowing I will see her in only a few short months. And then I remember our conversation from the night before, and it all makes sense. Standing outside, the icy Silicon Valley winds blowing in our faces as we wait for my brother-in-law to bring the car around. My sister is holding my youngest nephew in her arms to keep the cold out of his face, while I hold onto my mother tightly. My sister, out of nowhere and without context, breaks through the sound of our chattering teeth and awkwardly declares, “Mom! Shadee’s gay!” I look at my sister, eyes wide and in shock. I’ve just become accustomed to the new relationship my mother and I have formed, where the subject of my sexuality comes up only when she’s ready to speak to it. I don’t push, and I am annoyed at my sister for pushing those unnecessary buttons. But instead of a scoff or a grunt or words that I would imagine I would cry over later, my mother looks at me and all she says in response is, “So?” And I guess, in this moment, minutes before having to board my plane back to Denver, back to my studio apartment and my little puppy, any version of “me too” feels light. Like, it’s just not enough. So instead, I grab her and pull her in tightly, hot tears rushing down my freezing cheeks. And, I hope, more than anything else, that she feels like this hug is different. Because it is. But, in case I didn’t make it clear, Maman, “I love you too.” DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. In what ways does personal narrative provide opportunities for marginalized communities to tell their stories? 2. How might you use personal narrative to describe your own experiences in relation to broader social structures? 3. What strategies might queer people of color use to build coalition among queer people of color globally, transnationally, and interculturally? KEY WORDS • • • • •

Queer Iranian American Potentiality Personal Narrative Diaspora

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NOTES 1. Queer is used throughout this chapter as a political umbrella term for nonnormative sexualities. 2. In 2012, the secretary-general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights, Mohammad Javad Larijani, described homosexuality as an “illness and malady,” and as a Western “disease” (Dehghan 2013).

REFERENCES Abdi, S. (2014). Staying I(ra)n: Narrating queer identity from within the Persian closet. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 10(2), 1–20. http://liminalities.net/10-2/staying. pdf Abdi, S., & Calafell, B. M. (2017). Queer utopias and a (feminist) Iranian vampire: A critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34(4), 358–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2017.1302092 Abdi, S., & Van Gilder, B. (2016). Cultural (in)visibility and identity dissonance: Queer Iranian-American women and their negotiation of existence. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(1), 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2016.1120850 Ahmed, S. (2014). The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. Alexander, B. K. (2008). Queer(y)ing the postcolonial through the West(ern). In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 101–134). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Alimahomed, S. (2010). Thinking outside the rainbow: Women of color redefining queer politics and identity. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture, 16(2), 151–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504631003688849 Anzaldú a, G. (2012). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Calafell, B. M. (2004). Disrupting the dichotomy: “Yo soy Chicana/o?” in the new Latina/o South. The Communication Review, 7(2), 175–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10714420490448705 Calafell, B. M. (2007). Mentoring and love: An open letter. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 7(4), 425–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708607305123 Calafell, B. M. (2009). “She ain’t no diva!”: Reflections on in/hospitable guests/hosts, reciprocity, and desire. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 5(5), 1–18. http:// liminalities.net/5-4/diva.pdf Calafell, B. M. (2010). When will we all matter? Exploring race, pedagogy, and sustained hope for the academy. In D. L. Fassett & J. T. Warren (Eds.), The Sage handbook of communication (pp. 343–359). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Calafell, B. M. (2015). Monstrosity, performance, and race in contemporary culture. New York: Peter Lang. Corey, F. C. (1998). The personal: Against the master narrative. In S. J. Dailey (Ed.), The future of performance studies: Visions and revisions (pp. 249–253). Annandale, VA: National Communication Association. Dehghan, S. K. (2013). Iranian human rights official describes homosexuality as an illness. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2013/mar/14/iranofficial-homosexuality-illness Eguchi, S. (2011). Negotiating sissyphobia: A critical/interpretive analysis of one “femme” gay Asian body in the heteronormative world. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 19(1), 37–56. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.1901.37 Eguchi, S., & Asante, G. (2016). Disidentifications revisited: Queer(y)ing intercultural communication theory. Communication Theory, 26(2), 171–189. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt. 12086

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Eguchi, S., & Washington, M. S. (2016). Race-ing queerness: Normative intimacies in LOGO’s DTLA. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 40(4), 408–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0196859916658027 Gutierrez-Perez, R. (2017). Bridging performances of auto/ethnography and queer bodies of color to advocacy and civic engagement. QED: A Journal in GLTBQ Worldmaking, 4(1), 148–156. https://doi.org/doi:10.14321/qed.4.1.0148 Halualani, R. T., Fassett, D. L., Morrison, J. H. T. A., & Dodge, P. S. W. (2006). Between the structural and the personal: Situated sense-makings of “race.” Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies, 3(1), 70–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420500505700 Holling, M., & Calafell, B. M. (2011). Latina/o discourse in vernacular spaces: Somos de una voz? Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Kugle, S. A. (2013). Living out Islam: Voices of gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims. New York: New York University Press. Langellier, K. M. (1989). Personal narratives: Perspectives on theory and research. Text and Performance Quarterly, 9(4), 243–276. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462938909365938 Langellier, K. M. (1999). Personal narrative, performance, performativity: Two or three things I know for sure. Text and Performance Quarterly, 19(2), 125–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10462939909366255 Lorde, A. (2015). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. Madison, D. S. (1993). “That was my occupation”: Oral narrative, performance, and Black feminist thought. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13(3), 213–232. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10462939309366051 Madison, D. S. (1999). Performing theory/embodied writing. Text and Performance Quarterly, 19(2), 107–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462939909366254 Moraga, C. (2000). Loving in the war years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios. Brooklyn, NY: South End Press. Moraga, C. (2015). Catching fire: Preface to the fourth edition. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldúa (Eds.), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color (pp. xv–xli). Albany: State University of New York Press. Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (2015). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color (4th ed.). Albany: State University of New York Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Van Gilder, B., & Abdi, S. (2014). Identity management and the fostering of network ignorance: Accounts of queer Iranian women in the U.S. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 43(2), 151–170. https://doi.org/doi:10.1080/17475759.2014.892895 Yep, G. (2017). Further notes on healing from “The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies.” QED: A Journal in GLTBQ Worldmaking, 4(2), 115–122. https://doi.org/10. 14321/qed.4.2.0115

Chapter Three

Embracing the Criminal Queer and Trans Relational Liberatory Pedagogies Benny LeMaster and Meggie Mapes

Schooling practices continuously constitute prison regimes, adopting discursive constructions of civility and criminality to distinguish “good” from “bad” student-citizens (Rodriguez, 2010). For instance, Rudick and Golsan (2017) critically explore the ways whiteness is understood as civility in higher education contexts, finding that “whiteness-informed civility” (WIC) functions to (1) create a “good White” identity, (2) “erase racial identity,” and (3) “assert control over space” (p. 5). As a result, WIC racializes incivility and thus criminality as always already not White. Racialized criminality is equally prolific in K–12 education, evidenced by the material reality that one in six Black students, one in 13 Native American students, and one in 14 Latinx students experience at least one suspension from school, while one in 20 White students experience at least one suspension from school (Advancement Project, 2015; see also Advancement Project and Center for American Progress, 2016; GSA Network, 2014; Lambda Legal, 2013). Concurrently, 70% of school-related arrests are of Latinx and Black students (Advancement Project, 2015). The arbitrary rules that constitute and justify the school-toprison pipeline 1 further criminalize gender and sexual nonnormativity leading to the significant statistical reality that 85% of incarcerated LGBT youth are youth of color (Advancement Project and Center for American Progress, 2016). Incivility as criminality constitutes the erasure of queer and trans students of color by framing normative gender and sexual formations steeped in whiteness as “civil”(ized) and thus as exemplar body and identity formations. It is important to reflexively note that as university educators, we may not see many of these criminalized youth in our classrooms. The data suggest 63

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that a single out-of-school suspension during one’s freshman year of high school doubles the chances that the student will drop out of school prior to graduation, not to mention chronic abysmal university acceptance rates for low-income students of color (Advancement, 2015). In turn, the means of survival for individuals caught in the school-to-prison pipeline are scant, often leading young folks to turn to criminalized economies, including sex work and the drug trade, for survival (Lydon, Carrington, Low, Miller, & Yazdy, 2015). Evidenced here is a queer intercultural communicative onus. Specifically, we are interested in the discursive constitution of “civility” as a normative apparatus that produces and sustains the materiality of racialized criminality in pedagogical contexts through the privileging of White discourses of normative gender and sexuality. In particular, we seek to explicate, elucidate, and elaborate (Chávez, 2013, p. 84) on ties that bind intercultural communication research with queer and trans studies in order to theorize and perform what PCARE 2 (2007) terms “liberatory pedagogy” (p. 412). We maintain that liberatory pedagogies facilitate interventions into the discursive sedimentation of “criminal” and the concomitant performative reification of the prison industrial complex (PIC) as a compulsory site for managing “bad guys” (Fassett & Warren, 2007). Developing the critical calls for prison abolition made by PCARE (2007, 2017), we performatively illustrate our respective and collaborative liberatory pedagogies, which we understand as critical performative pedagogies committed to prison abolition. Additionally, the long tradition of prison abolition evident in radical queer and trans politics informs our praxis (Stanley & Smith, 2015). Whereas compulsory liberalism promotes a respectable “rights” framework that advocates prison reform and increased hate crimes legislation, an abolition framework rejects reform and hate crimes legislation as politicized technologies used to grow the PIC. In turn, an abolition framework centers the liberation of those most materially disadvantaged by the coloniality of gender—a coercive force that dehumanizes and destroys sexual and gender formations that are unintelligible to the colonizer’s gaze, which is always and already informed by xenophobia and White supremacy (Lugones, 2011). In a 21st-century U.S. American context, the carceral state emerges as the latest iteration in a perpetual line of neocolonial mechanisms designed to control and destroy racial, sexual, gender, bodily, and cognitive differences. As a result, an abolition framework centers the liberation of trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) folks of color—Black and Brown as well as indigenous trans women, trans feminine, and nonbinary folks in particular—through the complete destruction of the PIC. Given these commitments, it is important we pause to reflexively locate ourselves. I (Benny) work primarily with free world 3 students to unlearn stigma surrounding the symbol of the “criminal” through establishing and fostering writing relationships with incarcerated queer and trans folks and centering

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abolition in my curriculum. I identify as a mixed-race Asian/White queer and trans nonbinary educator married to a straight White transsexual woman. Passing as White and cisgender across most contexts secures many of my material privileges as a free world subject even as my family is surveilled and policed as a result of cisheterosexism (e.g., having police called on our “suspicious” genders and not incurring police violence as a result of White privilege that renders us as being “out of place” as opposed to “threatening”). I (Meggie) work with students who are currently incarcerated through a program made possible by President Obama’s Second Chance Pell Grant program. I have also begun working in prisons to facilitate affective-based education through batterer intervention programming. Finally, I work with free world students and graduate instructors as an introductory course director. I identify as a White queer feminist who is married to a cis-White man. Despite my queer identification, my “wifeness” grants me institutional access to heteronormative privilege and, coupled with my whiteness, the carceral state regularly renders me innocent. In many ways, my body constitutes an ideal citizen-subject where White femininities play integral roles in criminalizing non-White bodies. We locate ourselves in relation to the PIC so as to affirm material difference—the PIC impacts each of us differently just as the PIC impacts others different from us. At the same time, we do so in order to reflexively name the ways in which our bodies and pedagogies serve as rhetorical grounds against which the discursive construction of the “criminal” becomes (un)intelligible. We call on communication pedagogues-scholars to envision a world without prisons, a world where we might begin embracing the “criminal,” a world in which pedagogies that envision “liberation” center those who are denied the same so that we might think of ourselves as “free.” PCARE (2007) highlights the immediate goal: “[B]reak down the walls dividing free and imprisoned populations, hence opening up a space for dialogue and shared political action” (p. 412). From this vantage, liberatory pedagogies can be understood as relationally animated intercultural enactments. Eguchi and Asante (2016) reread Muñozian disidentifications as queer of color transnational migrant subjects. In so doing, they both adroitly narrate their embodied navigation of White gay normativity and exhibit the epistemological nuance that a queer intercultural communicative perspective can render. As a result of their labor, they characterize the “intercultural” as “a site of becoming and being saturated with complex, contingent, and contradictory renegotiations of identities, belongings, and power within a hierarchy of difference” (p. 176). With this framing, we conceptualize the “civil”/“criminal” dialectic that emerges in pedagogical contexts as an intercultural site of becoming and being that materially impacts queer and trans students of color in ways different from White queer, trans, and cisheterosexual students. In this regard, the “criminal” is known less through individualizing renderings and more

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through cultural technologies that animate “criminal” signification at the intersections of race, gender/sex, sexuality, and class. These technologies include pedagogical articulations that presume a “good”/“bad” onto-epistemology, effectively materializing “criminals” through value-based interpretations of difference. The “criminal,” thus understood, is an enigmatic sign deployed in strategic ways to control and violate those whose bodies fail to meet normative bodily and identificatory criteria dubbed “civil”(ized). Thus, when we embrace the “criminal” there is little left to fear in the criminalized subject who was before us all along. The remainder of this chapter is comprised of three sections. First, we explicate what we term queer and trans relational liberatory pedagogy (QTRLP). Specifically, we position QTRLP within the queer intercultural communication (QIC) tradition. Thereafter, we engage key approaches in performative pedagogy that are informed in and through liberatory logics. Second, we perform QTRLP. In particular, we script performative reflections that draw on and amalgamate our respective and collaborative pedagogical practices based on experiences working with free world and incarcerated students through our respective institutions between 2015 and 2018. Our intent is to illustrate shifts toward queer and trans relational articulations that explicate, elucidate, and elaborate the material and discursive constraints of the PIC. In this regard, our performance amalgamates autoethnographic insight and performative writing (Adams & Jones, 2011; Eguchi & Long, 2018). Third and finally, we reflect on liberatory pedagogies as a mode of queer worldmaking for QIC pedagogues and scholars. Our hope is less to determine what QTRLP is and more to suggest points of departure for greater, nuanced engagements between abolition politics and QIC research and pedagogy. To be certain, we argue liberatory pedagogies are imperative for QIC praxis as racialized nonnormative gender and sexual differences are increasingly and differentially criminalized, resulting in the disproportionate surveillance, policing, and incarceration of queer and trans folks of color. Thus, liberatory pedagogies are not tangential but foundational for transformation of self, other, and culture and are thus an integral component of QIC praxis. QUEER AND TRANS RELATIONAL LIBERATORY PEDAGOGIES In this section we outline QTRLP as the ground on which our performative approaches to abolition in the classroom emerge. We first locate queer and trans relationality within the QIC tradition and then turn to pedagogical investments.

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Queer Intercultural Communication and the Emergence of Queer and Trans Relationality In 2013, Karma Chávez edited a special issue of Journal of International and Intercultural Communication titled “Out of Bounds?” in which scholars explored the links between queer studies and intercultural communication research. The most explicit link between queer studies and intercultural communication can be summed up thusly: “The normative is violent” (p. 86). Chávez clarifies when she writes, “The logics of race, class, gender, sexuality, coloniality, and culture, among others including language, ability, education, and nation, congeal to produce certain identities, modes of relating, ways of living and manners of social organization not only as normal, but as normative” (p. 85–86). Yep (2003) describes the violence of normativity as “a symbolically, discursively, psychically, psychologically, and materially violent form of social regulation and control” (p. 18). Intersectionality—an epistemic point of focus for QIC—disrupts normativity by affirming the concurrent embodiment and navigation of privilege and disadvantage while refusing to acquiesce to reductive articulations of identity and embodiment (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Power so conceived is a relational phenomenon that is at once fluid as it is material. As such, QIC reveals the performative and material constitution of cultural power at the intersections of difference. QIC scholarship has since developed into a number of areas, including identity in discourse (Bie & Tang, 2016; Cheah & Singaravelu 2017; Goltz, Zingsheim, Mastin, & Murphy, 2016), performative cultural interventions (Gutierrez-Perez, 2015; Pérez & Brouwer, 2010), desire (Eguchi, 2015; Eguchi & Long, 2018), transnational and diasporic queerness (Asante, 2015; Eguchi, 2014), queer of color criticism (Abdi & Calafell, 2017; Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Eguchi, Files-Thompson, & Calafell, 2018; Howard, 2014), and mentoring and pedagogy (Calafell & GutierrezPerez, 2018; LeMaster, 2018; Pattisapu & Calafell, 2012), for instance. Notably, transness is undertheorized in QIC research; specifically, racialized transmisogyny marks an area of focus that requires attention (Griffin, 2014). binaohan (2014) argues that racialized nonnormative genders and sexualities are unintelligible under White supremacy, leading to the discursive and material erasure of trans women, trans feminine, and nonbinary folks of color. This erasure discursively dehumanizes and in turn justifies the criminalization of trans feminine and nonbinary subjectivities of color. Indeed, it is the inability to affirm non-White gender expressions and identities on their own terms that leads to the rhetorical constitution of queer and trans subjects of color as “uncivil”(ized). Yep, Russo, and Allen (2015) offer a model for mapping and affirming transness across intercultural contexts. This work has lent itself to developments at the intersections of QIC, transness, and critical communication pedagogy (e.g., LeMaster & Johnson, 2018).

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Relationality emerges as an important element animating QIC scholarship. For instance, Eguchi and Asante (2016) conceptualize of identity and belonging not as innate qualities nor as the result of socialization but, rather, as “ongoing complex and paradoxical dialectics of life struggle in historical and ideological spaces” (p. 183). Identity is thus processual as well as animated and constrained by power. Muñoz (2009) theorizes queerness in similar terms—not as an individual accomplishment but as “collectivity” (p. 11). Perceiving and affirming the “encrypted sociality” that enables queer and trans relationality requires reorienting perceptual registers so as to account for nonnormativity on its own terms (p. 6). In a recent forum, Yep (2017) mapped queer relationality or nonnormative modalities that “circulate outside . . . but frequently in relation to” normativity (p. 120). He theorized queer relationality emerging in and through spheres of intimacy and of desire. Spheres of intimacy involve “closeness” and “sensuality” that can “range from fleeting to enduring,” while spheres of desire involve “longings,” “affinities,” and “yearnings” that can “range from internally held to externally articulated” (p. 120). In this regard, we conceptualize of these spheres in spatial-temporal terms, with spheres of intimacy signaling temporal dimensions, while spheres of desire highlight spatial dimensions of queer relationality. LeMaster (2017a) theorizes “trans relationality,” which they posit as “a relational form that works through difference, desiring to meet and affirm the individual on their subjective terms of engagement recognizing the imposition of cultural power on their/our bodies that can make that affirmation difficult” (p. 90). For LeMaster, focusing relationality toward the structural forces that seek to thwart agency “mark[s] the materialization of queer worldmaking” as a result of highlighting the structural impositions seeking to limit what one can be and/or do but is nonetheless (p. 87). In this way, one is never simply “free” but always set in a power-based relation to intersectionally derived normative anchors seeking to delimit subjectivity. Taken together, queer and trans relationality affirms the spatial and temporal dimensions that constitute nonnormative relating set in tension with structural forces seeking to individualize collective/relational potentiality. Liberatory Pedagogy We theorize pedagogies as performative enactments that hold the potential for transformation through relating. Like Warren (1999), we maintain that institutionalized education constitutes reality through “enfleshment” (p. 258), or the point where learning, knowledge, and teaching emerge in and through the body politic. As performatives, pedagogy opens space for narrative interrogation of context—what we might view as the mundane—while remaining simultaneously attentive to structural power differentials (Fassett & Warren,

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2007; Giroux & Shannon, 1998). We agree with Pineau (1998), who notes that performative pedagogy “is more than a philosophical orientation or a set of classroom practices. It is a location, a way of situating one’s self in relation to students, to colleagues, and to the institutional policies and traditions under which we all labor” (p. 130). Thus, through LeMaster (2017b), we understand performative pedagogy as trans relational in its capacity to articulate self in relation to other, including structural, forces. With Yep (2017), we understand these pedagogical bonds as queer in that they occur across time and space: pedagogical contexts that are ephemeral and/or sustained over time as well as pedagogical contexts that occur in and out of formal learning environments. Taken together, performative pedagogy provides the necessary relational grounds for liberatory pedagogy that occurs across time and space with a sustained focus on structural forces. Here, we borrow from the members of PCARE (2007) who note that the immediate goal is to “break down the walls” (p. 412), where we operationalize “walls” beyond the physical bounds of the prison—though not excluding those material barriers—to encompass mundane spaces that sustain carceral logics, including pedagogical contexts. To be clear, liberatory pedagogy is not “happy” work, and we resist the affective urge to position ourselves as pedagogical optimists. Rather, embodying queer worldmaking through liberatory pedagogy means exploring “how the act of teaching can effectively and radically displace the normalized misery, everyday suffering, and mundane state violence that are reproduced and/or passively condoned by both hegemonic and critical/ counterhegemonic pedagogies” (Rodriguez, 2010, p. 8). Or, as PCARE (2017) asks, “To what extent do our critical, pedagogical, and rhetorical choices invest in the same logics that justify mass incarceration and police violence?” (p. 297). For us, then, liberatory pedagogy is committed to eliminating the PIC by critically interrogating communicative practices in pedagogical contexts emerging in both fleeting moments as well as over and across sustained pedagogical terms. Borrowing from Yep (2017), this practice includes developing and highlighting discourses, representations, and knowledges “of the nonnormative body”—the criminalized body—and mapping our relationship to and against those instantiations. As we note above, trans relationality requires a focus on structural forces that uphold normative materialities, thwarting queer worldmaking. For us, then, a queer (spatialtemporal pedagogical contexts) and trans (individual-structural) relational approach operationalizes performative pedagogy as liberatory. In the next section, we performatively reflect and narrate individual and collaborative performances of QTRLP in and out of the classroom.

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PERFORMING QUEER AND TRANS RELATIONAL LIBERATORY PEDAGOGY Atop my (Benny) desk sits a clear plastic container. It is filled with color pencils, markers, crayons, and blank sheets of drawing paper; community donations fund this extracurricular activity. Students who enter my office or who participate in the queer and trans groups and student organizations I facilitate and advise are invited to create art that will be sent to incarcerated queer and trans folks. This labor is reserved for those ready, willing, and able to discuss prison abolition as we create art for our incarcerated siblings. This reflexive labor presses free world students to grapple with the ways in which their capacity to presume freedom as queer and trans students is predicated on the criminalization of their incarcerated peers at the intersections of difference. Students contribute creative and intellectual labor to this ongoing mundane venture. Creatively, we craft art that serves as relational points of connection affectively reconfiguring and resisting the compulsory dehumanization that incarceration insists on. The art practice marks a slow communicative process imbued with intent. The colors, lines, shapes, and words the students use to communicatively craft connection with a stranger implore one to consider the humans on the receiving end, complete with their own aesthetic desires yet constrained by the PIC. Students come to understand abolition as a large and long-term commitment exceeding the individual artistic act: Prisoners are regularly moved between institutions, rendering communication inconsistent; the mail system is slow largely due to the institutionalized censoring and surveilling of communication; and the resulting means to strategically communicate with incarcerated folks requires time and resources. Intellectually, we theorize abolition. This labor requires that we lead with “intersectional reflexivity” such that we mark our privilege as free world subjects while we reflexively process our relative and material (dis)connections to the PIC (Jones, 2010). This labor presses us to inquire, What justifies the criminalization of racialized gender and sexual formations? We come to explore the gender binary as a question of race. That the binary was intended as a colonial means of legitimizing and distinguishing White manhood from White womanhood and as heteronormative constructs implored to reproduce the (White) human race (binaohan, 2014). We come to understand race as the predominant factor driving the dehumanization and resulting criminalization of gender and sexual difference. We come to further resist the liberal impulse to frame queer and trans prisoners as “innocent victims,” recognizing that so doing justifies the incarceration of others, including cisgender and heterosexual people of color. I (Meggie) am surveying public speaking textbooks, and I open a generically named book to the table of contents. Chapter 2: “Public Speaking and

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Civility.” I clench my teeth; classroom reverberations emerge as I remember: I am teaching free world students, and a student suddenly raises a hand and asks, “Do you think it’s good for an instructor to call out students that aren’t paying attention?” The question seems to transgress the illusory relational norms of class conduct. It is, in other words, a question out of the blue. “Well, what behavior is that threat trying to prohibit? Do you think those threats are useful or work?” I probe. “It makes us pay attention.” “Just don’t do bad stuff. Be civil. It’s in our book! So yes; you should get called out if you’re acting bad in class,” a second student chimes in, with eyes rolling as if to signal an obviousness to the aforementioned exchange. As students nod in agreement, the whiteness of communicative civility systemized through our discipline’s texts, textbooks, and writing materially emerges in this seemingly mundane encounter. I survey the class of honors students through and within my whiteness. Here, the prison regime’s epistemic roots of (il)legibility emerge. Here, the violence of the PIC becomes animated through a mundane acceptance of civil “Truth.” I sit down knowing that we have to take the moment. We spend the remainder of class talking and writing. . . . I am back at my desk reviewing a prospective book’s table of contents. I unclench my teeth and close the book, pushing its contents into piles of fellow “nos.” I (Benny) am teaching a course titled “Feminist Debates.” Responding to increasing student interest in transfeminism, I separate the course into two parts: (1) Transfeminism and (2) Criminalized Gender and Sexuality. In the first part, we explore transfeminism. More than that, we find it important to trace and deconstruct contemporary cissexism in the academy so as to understand rhetorical means used to dehumanize transness. For this, we agree to read Jeffreys’s (2014) trans-exclusionary monograph Gender Hurts. Due to the nature of epistemic violence this sort of text elicits, students agree to work in small coalitions of interpersonal support. Through our commitment to intersectionality, we affirm that the monograph will impact each of us differently; as a result, students agree to share the burden of work when/if peers—specifically trans peers—are triggered by the content and need time and space for healing. In turn, the coalitions coconstruct transfeminist critiques of the monograph. With a transfeminist foundation in place, we shift to the second part of the course: Criminalized Gender and Sexuality. Stanley and Smith’s (2015) anthology Captive Genders serves as the primary text informing this part of the course. Like Jeffreys’s trans-exclusionary monograph, race is undertheorized in much transfeminist discourse. Our shift to criminalization marks a concerted focus on race as a primary means of surveilling gender and sexuality. Dehumanization justifies criminalization, and thus our task includes humanizing those materially impacted

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by the PIC. Nair (2015) argues that the means by which to dissolve the prison is to paradoxically narrate and materialize the violences on which the PIC relies for its maintenance. For this, we turn to performance. In coalitions, students locate narratives written by queer and trans folks of color who are or were incarcerated. Students then adapt, collage, and construct performance scripts that stage mundane means of navigating criminalized economies, racist profiling practices including stop-and-frisk policies, xenophobic immigration policies, everyday movement through the PIC as an incarcerated person, life after the PIC, and stories of surviving solitary confinement as an institutionalized response to the transmisogynistic violences trans women are forced to maneuver in men’s facilities. This activity elicits reflexive empathy as it invites students to confront the materiality of the PIC as it impacts queer and trans bodies of color; and in ways different from our free world bodies. That is, through the performance of these narratives, students grapple with the ways whiteness, for instance, buffers and legitimizes gender and sexual identities and expressions even if they are nonnormative. I (Meggie) read the opening lines of a student reflection essay: “Does being a white man in prison now make me a minority?” His question emerges as privilege and power enter the curricular trajectory during a unit on gender in a communication theory class. I look down at my White hands waiting anxiously on the keyboard to type into the small comment box allocated for instructor feedback. All relational encounters are encapsulated within a surveyed messaging system where each student is known by name only—an institutionalized erasure of difference for students caught in the PIC. I read the question again, struggling to respond now—his question did, after all, suggest an examination of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the prison experience. “Am I now a minority?”—a question yearning for the simplicity of yes or no. Instead, those few words expose the racialized history of the PIC and the materiality of systemic incarceration of non-White bodies. How, I wondered, can I work with this student toward a trans relationality that can explore the dialectic tension between the individual and the institutional? For two weeks, we message in/as dialogue. “How does race become hyper-visible for you? How was race invisible for you before being incarcerated?” I ask. “It’s all there is between us, really. Not before this. Not for me, anyway,” he responds. “What about gender?” “Irrelevant here.” For two weeks, we explore this exchange; we contemplate the PIC’s illusion of gender as predetermined—reliant on cursory scripts embedded in cissexism and transmisogyny. In dialogue, we consider race as a key criminal

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signifier whereby the presence of imprisoned bodies of color justifies the mechanism of White supremacy that undergirds the PIC. After two weeks, the messages stop. I look at old messages; I hold tightly to these mediated strains of collectivity—mediated moments of abolitionist exchange. ABOLITION AS QUEER WORLDMAKING Yep (2003) characterizes queer worldmaking as “the opening and creation of spaces without a map” (p. 35). QTRLP desires queer worldmaking through its uncertain focus—uncertain in that QTRLP is interested less in particular goals (e.g., prison reform legislation) and more focused on nonnormative relational impulses that can be described as “hopefulness tempered by confusion” (PCARE, 2017, p. 301). Abolition is not legislated; abolition is embodied in and through relationality and articulated in active and persistent resistance to the hegemony of compulsory carceral logics as we work to topple the PIC (Davis, 2016). Muñoz’s (2009) anti-antirelational theorizing provides guidance here. For Muñoz, cultural “goals” that acquiesce to normativity can be understood as providing “abstract utopias” in that they delimit the potentiality of/for futurity (p. 37). We understand prison reform legislation as abstract utopias in that prison reform merely instantiates and expands the existing PIC, thereby foreclosing on abolitionism and the liberation of nonnormative embodiment and identity. Conversely, prison abolition can be understood as a “concrete utopia” in that the goal is indiscernible though clearly understood through the radical decentering of whiteness and the concomitant affirmation of racialized gender and sexual nonnormativity. Thus the goal is relationally informed prison abolition while the collective though varied and often contradictory particularities of abolition, including the implausibility of a singular route toward abolition, are key to ensuring the potentiality of futurity— prison abolition demands a force that is as disparate and pervasive as the PIC itself while the anchor is located in the bodies and identities of those most materially impacted by the PIC. Similarly, PCARE (2017) advocates liberatory pedagogies that “resist certainty and self-congratulation” and envision a “nuanced sense of what such a goal truly entails” (p. 302). Concrete utopias provide the foundation for queer worldmaking in Muñoz’s (2009) estimation. For Muñoz, queer worldmaking comes into play when we enact the uncertain focus of concrete utopias—of prison abolition—understood as a “utopia in the present” in which we work to affirm racial, gender, and sexual nonnormativity on their own terms of engagement (p. 37). That is, liberatory pedagogies are relational accomplishments that understand queer worldmaking as a utopia in the

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present as enacted in and through relationalities that reenvision the various and disparate forces that animate carceral logics and the PIC as grounds for material transformation. In short, abolition is queer worldmaking is QIC praxis. We invite you, the reader, to join in our collective and individual efforts to abolish the PIC in the way that best fits your pedagogical ability and capacity even as you press and transform those limits to account for greater impact. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. In what ways have you encountered pedagogies that perpetuate carceral logics—even if unintentionally? How have you perpetuated those logics in your role as a teacher/student? How are those logics racialized? Gendered? Sexualized? 2. What does it mean to think of abolition in relational terms? In what ways are you and your peers impacted by the PIC in your everyday lives as a result of your embodied differences? 3. Can you recount the first time you encountered the rhetorical figure of the “criminal”? 4. What would have to change on your campus to ensure your broader learning environment was committed to liberatory pedagogy? 5. In what ways can you conceive of interpersonal interactions as sites for enacting liberatory pedagogy? What would have to change about your interpersonal interactions to ensure you are embodying QTRLP in the everyday? KEY WORDS • • • • •

Queer Relationality Trans Relationality Liberatory Pedagogy Abolition Queer of Color NOTES

1. GSA Network (2014) in collaboration with Crossroads Collaborative defines the schoolto-prison pipeline as “a set of school policies and practices that push students away from education and onto a pathway toward the juvenile detention and the prison industrial complex” (p. 3). Data suggest youth of color and low-income youth are disproportionately implicated by the school-to-prison pipeline and that youth embodying and identifying in gender and sexual nonnormative ways are especially vulnerable to this system of racialized criminalization.

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2. Prison Communication, Activism, Research, and Education (PCARE) describes a collective of NCA scholars and activists committed to prison abolition. 3. “Free world” references those who are not, and have yet to be, incarcerated. Concurrently, we recognize that “free” is a term fraught with tension in a White supremacist, patriarchal, and settler context such as the ones in which we work. Still, free world locates one’s material relationship to the PIC.

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Yep, G. A. (2017). Further notes on healing from “The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies.” QED, 4(2), 115–122. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.4.2.0115 Yep, G. A., Russo, S. E., & Allen, J. (2015). Pushing boundaries. In L. G. Spencer & J. C. Capuzza (Eds.), Transgender communication studies (pp. 69–92). Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Chapter Four

“Chinese Top, British Bottom” Becoming a Gay Male Internet Celebrity in China Tianyang Zhou

In 2012, a viral online video titled The Josh & Eddie Show—Ep13—20 Days to Go offered the world an intimate window into the wedding of a Chinese–Caucasian gay male couple, Ye Fan and Josh Taylor (RMIUC and J.T.). They soon became the most successful of China’s gay Internet celebrities, with legions of fans both within and outside of China. In contrast to the long-lasting “dominant White top versus submissive Chinese bottom” cultural stereotypes, the couple have been framed as zhongguo xiaogong—yingguo xiaoshou (“Chinese top, British bottom”) across social media platforms. This study investigates the discursive construction of RMIUC and J.T. as a “role-inverted” interracial gay male couple to answer the call for queer(y)ing intercultural communication studies (e.g., Chávez, 2013; Eguchi, 2015; Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Yep, 2013). Historically, the narratives of “masculine” gay White man versus “feminine” gay Chinese (or other Asian) man were born out of the ideological (re)production of orientalism, which, as Said (2003) argues, acts as “a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’)” (p. 43). The orientalist project perpetuates the belief of a dominant superior West and a subjugated inferior East. It operates to erase the diversity that colonizers encountered and place it under the umbrella term of “the oriental.” From a Western perspective, what it means to be Asian is constructed largely based on the “one-dimensional portrayal of Asians who are nearly always presented as one in the same despite divergent histories, cultural backgrounds, and points of origin” (Han, 2015, p. 27). In this context, Asian men, both gay and straight, have been represented in a particular 79

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stereotypical way, as being fundamentally foreign. They have been portrayed as the feminine Others who have failed to achieve the White masculine norms and therefore are inferior to White men. The feminization of gay Asian men in contemporary Western gay male culture has been the subject of considerable criticism (e.g., Ayres, 1999; Chou, 2000; Eguchi, 2015; Fung, 1996; Han, 2015; Hoang, 2014; Kong 2011; Lee, 2005; Lim, 2014). Going back to the 1990s, Ayres (1999) foregrounds the discrimination against Asian men in the Australian gay scene, where their existence has either been simply ignored or they have been (mis)represented as feminine, passive, and subservient. These cultural stereotypes have manifested vividly in Asian–Caucasian relationships: “The Western man is older, the Asian man is younger. The Western man is wealthy, the Asian man is poor. The Western man is sexually active, the Asian man is sexually passive” (Ayres, 1999, p. 94). Similarly, Kong (2011) observes that gay men from Hong Kong who migrated to Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, as both a racial and sexual minority, tended to “suffer from various forms of subordination from White and heterosexual society at large, as well as in the sexualised gay community in particular” (p. 123). They lived under the dominant, stereotypical “golden boy” imagery in the gay racial hierarchy: “A young virgin boy who is innocent, infantile, feminized or even androgynous” (Kong, 2011, p. 128). In his analysis of the representations of gay Asian men in mainstream Western gay male publications, Han (2015) argues that the portrayals of Asian men in these media largely serve to reinforce the dominance of gay White male masculinity, and, at the same time, to relegate gay Asian men to the margins of the Western gay male community. This is in line with the way that the images of Asian men in popular Western imagination have been used to support White male superiority. The depictions of gay Asian men as feminine and submissive have been more evident in sexually explicit materials, especially in gay video pornography. In his groundbreaking essay “Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn,” Richard Fung (1996), a video artist and cultural critic, argues that due to the stereotypes of Asian men as deficient in masculinity, Asian actors have always portrayed passivity in gay American video pornography and have been treated as sexual objects for the pleasure of the dominant White tops. Fung (1996) is careful to point out that “the problem is not the representation of anal pleasure per se, but rather the narratives privilege the (White) penis while always assigning the Asian the role of bottom”; in other words, “Asian and anus are conflated” (p. 187). Likewise, Hoang (2014) presents a picture of how men of color are excluded from contemporary gay American video pornography: “Whereas Chicano/Latino characters are coded as macho, hypersexual, straight tops, and thus not qualifying as properly out and proud gay citizens, Asian characters are not conferred gay membership due to their effeminacy, desexualization, and exclusive bottom

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role” (p. 42). Looking directly at sex acts, these sexual representations of Asian men shape the understanding of what is normal and desirable regarding sex, sexuality, gender, and race, and, more importantly, they parallel the exclusion of gay Asian men from gay male membership in Western societies in general, and in American society in particular, as a result of “their racial–ethnic foreignness, working-class professions, and tenuous immigration status” (Hoang, 2014, p. 42). This study continues the critical inquiry into the intersection of race with gay male sexuality, interrogating RMIUC and J.T.’s Internet celebrity practice, which involves “ongoing maintenance of a fan base, performed intimacy, authenticity and access, and construction of a consumable persona” (Marwick & boyd, 2011, p. 140). Eguchi and Asante (2016) argue that “a mainstream body of queer communication scholarship has mostly addressed the needs of non-heteronormative knowing, being, and acting that are relevant to White, U.S. American, and middle-class people,” and “the intersectional modes of sexuality, sex/gender, and body across multiple sociopolitical, economic, and historical positionings remain understudied” (p. 173). In this light, this chapter explores the complexity of culture and communication, focusing on China’s gay male Internet celebrities as products of the interactions between past and present, local and global, where sexuality, race, gender, nation operate simultaneously to create inclusion and exclusion. In star studies, there has been “a reluctance to treat audiences seriously,” which, as Yu (2012) argues, stems from “a deep-rooted bias which sees audiences as a ‘manipulated mass,’ and a critical tradition of valuing theoretical assumptions over audiences’ opinions” (p. 22). Zhang and Farquhar (2010) argue that although the audience has long been proved to be important to Chinese stardom, audience research has remained very underdeveloped in the field of Chinese star/celebrity studies. As such, this study stresses the importance of the audience in understanding gay male Internet celebrity in China via a critical textual analysis of the online fan comments on RMIUC and J.T.’s most well-known video, The Josh & Eddie Show—Ep13—20 Days to Go. Responding to Yu’s (2012) call for the use of a “mixed methodology,” this study counters “the idea of a text-constructed, abstract and passive spectator” and simultaneously rejects “the notion of a ‘real’ audience and the idea that empirical audience research offers a more authentic picture of audience” (p. 25). Instead it is argued that RMIUC and J.T.’s images and gay male masculinities are constructed and transformed in the process of audience transmedia consumption across time and space. This chapter consists of three parts: first, it provides a brief review of the history of gay male Internet celebrities in China. Networked media is changing China’s celebrity culture and offering a public forum for marginalized queer voices. In this context, the emergence of Duyao, the first “gay” Internet celebrity in mainland China, is discussed, which provides a historical and

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technological background against which to understand China’s gay male Internet celebrity practices. Second, the chapter goes on to scrutinize the rise of RMIUC and J.T. It is argued that their story should be understood against the background of expanding Chinese boys’ love (BL) fandom and the commercialization of the pleasure of BL matchmaking of male celebrities in Chinese media culture. Finally, building on a critical reading of online fan discussion of RMIUC and J.T., the chapter explores how their Internet celebrity practices serve to articulate normative discourses of race, gender, sexuality, and nation, through the creation of “Chinese top, British bottom.” To date, several studies have investigated the top/bottom sexual roles within Chinese gay male communities (e.g., Zhou et al., 2013; Zheng & Zheng, 2017). From a public health perspective, they concentrate on the relevance of top/bottom sex-role preference among Chinese gay men to HIV/AIDS prevention, rather than on the ideology assigned to topness/bottomhood. Breaking from this approach, this chapter focuses on the discursive construction of RMIUC and J.T. as “Chinese top, British bottom” and the racial-sexual power dynamics underlying it, aiming to contribute to a cultural understanding of “topness/bottomhood” in the Chinese context. To understand the Internet celebrity practices of RMIUC and J.T., first a brief review of the history of gay male Internet celebrities in China is provided. A BRIEF HISTORY OF GAY MALE INTERNET CELEBRITIES IN CHINA As substantial social stigma has been attached to homosexuality in Chinese society, almost no celebrities have publicly acknowledged their gay or lesbian sexual orientation in mainland China. According to a 2015 report on China.org.cn, an authorized government portal site to China, the well-known stylist Ji Mi is the first and only mainland Chinese celebrity to have openly announced that he is gay. The development of information and communication technologies, especially the popularization of online blogging, has opened up a new space for celebrity practices in China, which has greatly facilitated the rise of gay male Internet celebrities. Despite the fact that the Chinese government has been implementing increasingly sophisticated efforts to control the Internet, the new media, as Yu (2007) argues, “can become a new venue for individuals to exercise citizenship, not through overt resistance, but through a process of re-subjectification via mediated expression, social interaction, and circulation of their own media stories” (p. 424). Although these seemingly apolitical new media practices are unlikely, being tantamount to immediate and radical political change in China, they could turn out to be political, as they have influenced the ways that people imagine politics, culture, and society.

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In this context, online blogging offers a public forum for marginalized queer voices, which enables the Chinese queer experience to be consumed without being subjected to editorial control (Kang & Yang, 2009). Arguably the first “gay” Internet celebrity in mainland China, Duyao (real name Chen Zheng), rose to fame in 2006 through his exploitation of MSN Space, attracting more than six million views, and each of his blog posts received thousands of comments. In a report by Sina Entertainment (2016), Duyao, together with other well-known Chinese bloggers, such as Furong Jiejie and Mu Zimei, was touted as “the first generation of internet celebrity in China (wanghong bizu).” The emergence of these Internet celebrities indicates “the heterogeneous nature of China’s developing celebrity culture” resulting from the rise of commercial media and rapid technological expansion (Jeffreys & Edwards, 2010, p. 12). The situation is much like the phenomenon of microcelebrity in the West—“a mindset and set of practices in which audience is viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan management; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others” (Marwick & boyd, 2011, p. 140)—that demonstrates the ever-changing nature of celebrity culture in the age of social media. The wanghong bizu are more available and accessible than traditional celebrities and actively use social media to develop and maintain fans. They began to strive to perform a kind of interactivity and authenticity. Guo (2012) points out that Furong Jiejie, one of the earliest well-known Internet celebrities in China, strategically appropriated her “grass-rootedness and ordinariness” and simultaneously adjusted her stances of “official, commercial, and subordinate positions” to maintain upward mobility and to perpetuate her significant fame (p. 155). Her success story is considered a victory for ordinary Chinese people. Similarly, Mu Zimei, another legendary female Chinese Internet celebrity, unexpectedly found fame by blogging about her sexual life as an urban professional woman. Although her blog was eventually shut down, she became extremely famous through a strategy of “being real” and maintaining a sense of openness, immediacy, and interactivity. Her success was seen as a defiance of rigid media censorship and severe restrictions on public discussion and expression of sexuality, and is considered “the earliest prominent example of the Internet-based sexual revolution” (Farrer, 2015, p. 156). In the same way, Duyao actively maintained a sense of realness and ordinariness by sharing his everyday life in the United Kingdom with his fans via photo blogging. His posts ranged from stories about his travels around the world to his experiences at gay nightclubs in London, performing the “exclusivity” of Internet celebrity—“the glamorization and celebration of practices and possessions so elite in access or rare in occurrence that it would be unusual for ordinary people to experience them without high ‘economic capital’” (Abidin, 2018, p. 20). For his Chinese gay fans, especially those

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suffering from oppression and those to whom the international metropolitan life was not accessible, Duyao portrayed a “gay” life that they could only dream of. Moreover, Duyao’s appeal was greatly sustained by his artistic talent and unique taste in fashion, which meant he was perceived as elite and exceptional. While studying for a master’s degree in fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, an internationally renowned design school, he gained a reputation in the Chinese gay world for his avant-garde photography blogs, which typically highlighted gender bending, nudity, rebelliousness, androgyny, and glamour, leading to him becoming a “gay” style icon, though he denied being gay in his autobiographical novel published in 2009. Duyao’s success has greatly encouraged the rise of gay male Internet celebrities in China. For example, in 2008, a Chinese gay couple, J. Law and Kirio (also known as Xia He and Mai Luoluo) rose to fame posting photos on Renren.com, a popular Chinese social media site. Like Duyao, they portrayed an ordinary, everyday gay romance and established their online presence using mediated self-presentation techniques. At the same time, they actively demonstrated their talents, skills, and accomplishments—while J. Law worked as a photographer, model, and entrepreneur, Kirio became a writer— and treated their followers as a fan base to achieve greater fame. In 2012, a Chinese–Caucasian interracial gay male couple, namely, RMIUC and J.T., aroused a new wave of Chinese BL fandom. The following section will explore the rise of RMIUC and J.T., which demonstrates not only the ways that networked media is changing China’s celebrity culture but also the gendered and racialized construction of gay men in the Chinese popular imagination. THE RISE OF RMIUC AND J.T. RMIUC (also known as Edison, or Eddie), whose real name is Ye Fan, is arguably the most famous gay male Internet celebrity in China. His high profile began with the moniker of “RMIUC,” short for “rape me if you can,” which draws inspiration from the 2002 American biographical crime movie Catch Me If You Can. Despite his own clarification that “RMIUC” refers to the stand taken by unfearing minds against rape, his fans tend to read this moniker in a more sexually suggestive way. They have developed a language, R da (“Master R”), from the moniker, which creates a linguistic tie both with each other and their favorite gay male Internet celebrity. RMIUC first began to achieve Internet fame in 2012 as a vlogger on Tudou.com, a leading online video network in China. He ran a video-cast channel named Master R’s Channel, on which his short video series The Josh & Eddie Show has been shown since November 2011. Within just two years of its establish-

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ment, RMIUC’s video-cast channel had attracted more than 1.5 million views. Among all of the videos published on the site, The Josh & Eddie Show—Ep13—20 Days to Go is the best known: It quickly went viral, and has been viewed more than 538,000 times since it was posted in October 2012. Featuring a very candid question-and-answer-style self-interview, the five-minute video resulted in a surge of public attention through tweets and shares across various social media platforms. Shortly afterward, the exposure of the high-profile wedding of RMIUC and his British husband, J.T., once again captured the attention of the Chinese gay world and, immediately after that, RMIUC published his first autobiographical novel, closely followed by a romance novel in 2013. Although the marriage only lasted for approximately two years, his constant presence in the spotlight made RMIUC a new favorite guest on reality television shows such as I, Supermodel (2015), Let’s Talk (2015), and Pretty Girl (2015), as well as web dramas and movies such as Mr. Pride vs Miss Prejudice (2017), Dating High (2017), and Really? (2018). An important factor contributing to the rising fame of RMIUC and J.T., as well as their predecessors, is the expansion of the Chinese BL fandom from 2000, and the subsequent commercialization of the BL matchmaking of male celebrities. Among the fans of RMIUC and J.T., there are many who identify as funü (“rotten women”), a term originally from the Japanese fujoshi subculture, referring to Chinese young female BL fans. This group of fans celebrates the “pure love” in the story of RMIUC and J.T., one of greatest attractions of BL cultural products to funü (Koetse, 2014). The emergence of Chinese BL fan culture was closely connected with the popularization of the Internet, which arguably plays a role in promoting openness to and tolerance of homosexuality in Chinese society. Online communication has facilitated BL activities in China by offering new opportunities for BL participants, especially funü, who are actively engaging in celebrating, creating, and sharing fictional homoerotic relationships between boys and/or men (Liu, 2009). By homoeroticizing certain male celebrities, they are “disturbing the boundaries that separate male homo-social desire from male homosexual desire” and “touching on the prohibition against homosexuality,” which “sometimes even transcends the scope of BL fandom online and begins to influence, even interfere with, the established heterosexual norms in the mainstream culture” (Zhou, 2017, p. 96). Since approximately 2006, there has been stigmatization of and moral panic about the young female BL fan community in the Chinese media, which expresses concerns that the homoeroticism and depictions of sex in the BL subculture will endanger Chinese young people’s values and morality. In 2010, a large-scale censorship crackdown targeted Chinese BL websites and fiction writers in response to what they perceived as their rebellious and antimainstream practices. However, despite the increasingly negative image

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of BL fans in the Chinese media, BL fandom has gradually become diffused into mainstream culture as a result of a decade-long development effort. As a result, some media productions have begun to cater to the interests of the young Chinese female BL fan community, deliberately exploiting the growing popularity of Chinese BL fandom (Yi, 2013). Furthermore, Chinese BL fans’ male homosexual fantasies have slowly been (re)appropriated by mainstream culture for commercial purposes, “with business seeking to capitalize on the subversive pleasure of BL matchmaking of celebrities, which remains valuable in selling the products of those celebrities” (Zhou, 2017, p. 105). Participation in Chinese BL fandom and the growth of its consumption of male homosexuality, therefore, run a risk of being drawn into a consumerist trap. It is in this context that RMIUC and J.T. have continued to follow the strategies of their predecessors, combining the display of ordinary everyday gay romance with the performance of their individual talents in the realms of media and fashion. RMIUC enthusiastically harnesses both social media and traditional media platforms to maintain a vast legion of fans from both within and outside of China. His Sina Weibo and Instagram accounts have attracted more than 1,340,000 and 463,000 followers, respectively, at the time of writing. Each of his tweets and pictures receives thousands of comments. Although RMIUC is just one among other Chinese gay male Internet celebrities, he is marked out as different from his contemporaries in several ways. First, he is a Chinese New Zealander, who lived in New Zealand for 13 years and graduated from the University of Auckland, a top international university. He married his White British husband in a surreal gay wedding that would be the envy of many Chinese gay men. He published two novels in two years, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. He became a gay father via surrogacy in 2017, welcoming his son Frederic, who himself is becoming a “micro-microcelebrity” (Abidin, 2015). He transformed from an Internet celebrity into a “real” star, with a career spanning television, movies, and fashion—including modeling for Calvin Klein and Diesel and starting his own clothing line, Ye De (“Stuff by Ye”). He is also a role model for other particularly prolific Chinese gay male social media users on and across different social networking sites (wangluo mingyuan), striving to achieve their dreams of celebrity. The various factors related to race/ethnicity (Chinese), language (English and Mandarin), age (youth), and size (very muscled), among others, together contribute to RMIUC’s higher economic, social, and cultural status, which perpetuates his success in competing with other gay male Internet celebrities in China. The next section looks more closely at the ways in which the Internet celebrity practices of RMIUC and J.T. serve to articulate normative discourses of race, gender, sexuality, and nation. It will explain how the

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discursive construction of “Chinese top, British bottom” has transformed RMIUC into a masculinist and nationalistic gay icon. THE MAKING OF “CHINESE TOP, BRITISH BOTTOM” The online fan discussions about RMIUC and J.T. have been dominated and characterized by considerations of a racialized “top/bottom” dyad. In contrast to the previously discussed “natural and normal” dominant White top versus submissive Chinese bottom pattern, the couple have been discursively constructed as “Chinese top, British bottom” by their fans. For example, Ergou Kong, a well-known Chinese writer and online opinion leader with approximately 2.87 million followers on Sina Weibo, praised RMIUC and J.T., tweeting, “The most handsome gay couple throughout history: RMIUC and J.T., Chinese top and British bottom. Love is a grand subject. From ancient times until now, only love can overcome social, economic, racial, and gender-based constraints” (Kong, 2014). First, it is necessary to examine the construction of the “Chinese top.” In the online discussions of RMIUC, there are far more positive than negative comments. RMIUC’s unique celebrity persona rests on his construction as a “Chinese top” in an interracial relationship with a gay White male; more specifically, it is his hypermasculine image that constitutes a prized visual marker of difference from those effeminized Chinese gay men who are constrained by the White gay normativity that is “powerfully renegotiated across national and cultural boundaries” (Eguchi, 2015, p. 31). Hoang (2014) argues that “to replace Asian-as-anus with Asian-as-penis is to reinscribe the penis and topness, that is dominant masculinity, as the desirable end point” (p. 19). In this sense, the remasculinization that is embodied in RMIUC’s Internet celebrity practice rewrites abject masculinity at the expense of scapegoating femininity and the feminine. Overturning the stereotypical images of “effeminate” and “passive” gay men in the Chinese popular imagination, RMIUC’s success has been achieved through collusion with misogynist heteromasculinity and the marginalization of male effeminacy. For example, he is differentiated by his fans from other Chinese gay Internet celebrities in the fashion and beauty industry because of his degree in civil engineering from the University of Auckland, which one commenter describes as “a major of which straight-masculinity spills out.” A dividing line has clearly been drawn here, separating civil engineering as a “real” man’s job and fashion/beauty as the stereotypical feminized “gay” occupation. Furthermore, Zheng (2015, p. 149) observes that there has been a preference for masculinity and a strong antieffeminate bias among the gay male community in postsocialist China, similar to the hypermasculine gay clone culture in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, a Chinese

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top/bottom system has emerged: “On their entry into the community, they [Chinese gay men] find themselves overwhelmed by the questions of whether they are 1s or 0s”—“1, symbolizing the penis, is identified within the community as the male role, whereas 0, symbolizing the vagina, is associated with the female role” (Zheng, 2015, p. 75). Chinese tops (also known as gong, or 1s) are seen as being active, rational, aggressive, and dominant, and as possessing “a controlling tendency, a desire to protect others, a strong sense of security, a callous mind, and an interest in violence”; Chinese bottoms (also known as shou, or 0s), on the other hand, are considered passive, submissive, obedient, and dependent, as those who “accept control, require protection, lack a sense of security, submit to domination, reply on intuition, and have an interest in music, art, and aesthetics” (Zheng, 2015, pp. 79–80). It is important to note that bottomhood has been assigned an inferior status among the Chinese gay male community, which is dominated by hegemonic gender rules and expectations (Zheng, 2015). As a result, Chinese bottoms tend to disguise themselves as tops in social settings, and simultaneously employ the strategy of remasculinization to gain acceptance from the dominant heteronormative culture. Zheng (2015) draws a picture of a Chinese bottom’s remasculinization in his everyday practice: He first terminated what he considered feminine behaviors. . . . He then increased his interactions with male friends and scrupulously corrected what he thought were lapses in his behaviors. Despite his distaste for sports, he forced himself to watch soccer games with his male friends. He also recorded his own speech to identify what he believed were feminine tones (niangniang qiang) and endeavored to obliterate them. (Zheng, 2015, p. 89)

The disavowal of bottomhood entails a strong denial of gay male effeminacy in China, which should be understood as operating in a context where “gender has become the pivotal point to reconstitute the triangulated power structure of class, gender, and state as China has transitioned from Maoism to neoliberalism” (Zhang, 2014, p. 32). Achieving desirability via remasculinization, both in Chinese gay men’s everyday practices and in RMIUC’s construction as a “Chinese top,” suggests an urgent need for a reconsideration of the treatment of femininity in contemporary Chinese gay male culture. In this vein, the concept of “Chinese bottom” can provide a conceptual fulcrum to question the oppressive gender and sexual norms in Chinese society, which has considerable potential for cultivating social and political alliances between Chinese gay men and other subjects struggling at the bottom of social hierarchies. Moreover, RMIUC serves as an exemplary case study of the complex relationship between the conflicting national categories of Chinese and Western and the discourses of masculinity in contemporary China as they are performed in the creation of “Chinese top, British bottom.” RMIUC has been

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mythologized by some of his fans as a “young hero” (shaonian yingxiong). They explicitly express their patriotic admiration and respect, with one comment: “This top finally brings honor and pride (zheng kou qi) for Chinese men” (Liuwanqingsansuxiaoman, 2012). This celebratory construction of RMIUC as a young Chinese hero who brings honor and pride to China and Chinese men reflects a historically deep-rooted anxiety about Chinese masculinity. More specifically, this anxiety about the perceived quality of Chinese men manifested as a “crisis of masculinity” in the post-Mao era and then focused on “disappointment with Chinese men as compared with Western and Japanese men, and anxiety over the virility of China as a nation in the globalizing world” in the mid- and late 1980s, which “echoes both the modernist internalization of Western gender standards as the universal norm and the rethinking of Communist gender ideology” (Song & Hird, 2014, pp. 8–10). In the 1990s, China’s national sentiment was officially expressed as patriotism. Zhao (2005) points out that by “reinforcing China’s national confidence and turning past humiliation and current weakness into a driving force for China’s modernization, nationalism has become an effective instrument for enhancing the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] legitimacy, allowing for it to be redefined on the claim that the regime would provide political stability and economic prosperity” (p. 135). In this context, patriotic politics has become “a major venue for accomplishing masculinity” in the mainstream culture, and a good Chinese man should be “a man who brings honor to the motherland and safeguards national dignity on the international stage” (Song & Hird, 2014, p. 12). In this regard, the making of a Chinese gay male star has been accomplished by coding RMIUC as a patriotic young hero who has brought pride to China and is defending Chinese masculinity on the international and intercultural stage. The concerns about Chinese masculinity have continued into the new millennium. In the context of the general “opening up” of sexual culture in China, interracial dating and sexuality have proliferated, offering Chinese women “a set of sexual possibilities and new sexual norms that could be described as an alternative sexual subculture” (Farrer, 2010, p. 87). The fact that “every year, tens of thousands of Chinese women—mostly young, goodlooking, and highly educated—have married foreigners since China opened its doors to the outside world” has rearoused the deep-rooted male anxiety described previously (Song & Hird, 2014, p. 11). As a result, nationalist efforts to defend Chinese men in the media have increased, especially in the interracial sexual field. This was evident in a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo in 2015 titled “Sichuan Man Married a Beautiful British Songstress.” The hashtag was linked to a news report within which a Chinese man from rural Sichuan was heroized as “gaining face for Chinese men” after overcoming various difficulties to marry a British singer (Zhou, 2015). Many commenta-

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tors argued that these nationalist portrayals embodied a gendered hierarchy in the Chinese popular imagination of interracial relationships that privileges Chinese men, who have been seen as “displaying the prestige of a nation” (yang wo guo wei), and simultaneously subordinates and denigrates their female counterparts, who have been accused of “blind worship of everything foreign” (chong yang mei wai) and of “humiliating the country” (sang quan ru guo). Similarly, in the case of RMIUC and J.T., RMIUC has built a strong sense of manhood and recovered Chinese masculinity in the interracial sexual field. In postsocialist China, homosexuality has been seen as “a peril to the security of the nation” that reflects “powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the Sick Man of East Asia” (Zheng, 2015, p. 72). The integration of Chineseness and topness has indeed enabled RMIUC to become a “good” Chinese gay male “hero” who conforms to the dominant male gender roles. However, the strategy of remasculinization in constructing a Chinese gay male Internet celebrity is of limited efficacy, because it subscribes to a nationalist and misogynist agenda. In his critical reading of Xiang Liu, a sporting idol who won China’s first male track-and-field Olympic gold medal, Zhang (2014) foregrounds the masculinist manifestation of neoliberal hegemony in China, arguing that as a homogenizing, masculinist, and nationalistic icon, Liu’s hypermasculinity serves as a space in which “to rearticulate Chinese national identity and mitigate widening social inequality” (p. 36). The mythologization of a Chinese top may easily fall into the trap of patriarchal nationalism, thus demeaning the feminine Other and further reinforcing antieffeminacy prejudice among the Chinese gay male community. Turning the focus toward J.T., two contrasting views emerge in the online discussion. One is that J.T. has been portrayed and re-created as cute, innocent, and adorably shy (jiaoxiu). As one fan put it: “Little J is acting innocent, so cute!” (Leihu, 2012). On the other hand, J.T. has been condemned by many Chinese netizens. For the most part, these attacks are focused on his body as a gay White male—for example, “such a short and small laowai!” and “aren’t all laowai deemed to be bulky and muscular?” The term laowai (literally “old foreigner”), according to Farrer (2010), refers to White foreigners in Chinese cities. Although some fans do not deny that J.T. is handsome, they evidently still find it difficult to accept his body. As one commenter expressed, “J is so cute, like a timid and lovable little bird. But I still feel uncomfortable as I have got used to large-boned laowai” (Sumoulan, 2012). In the popular imagination of Chinese–Caucasian interracial gay sexuality, the racial stereotypes have constructed the gay White male as dominant, with a masculine body. White gay men who conform to these racial stereotypes may experience their foreign masculinity as empowering;

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by contrast, a discriminatory attitude has been shown toward those viewed as not conforming to the racialized masculine norms. In addition to the criticisms of his body, some Chinese netizens have questioned and attacked J.T.’s bottomhood, expressing negative sentiments: “Such a handsome laowai is a shou! I am so sick of it” and “the laowai ought to be a gong!” The issue with a White man being a top only arises because the discourse says he ought to be, which again demonstrates a racialized convention within which White gay men are stereotypically consigned to the top position. From a nationalist perspective, J.T. is disdainfully subordinated because he has surrendered his White masculine and dominant power to a Chinese top. While celebrating the fact that “China has finally topped,” J.T. is condemned as “so bottom” (tai shou le). Here used as an adjective, the “bottom” (shou) position constitutes an inferior social identity in contemporary Chinese gay male culture. CONCLUSION This chapter has explored how digital media technologies are changing the celebrity culture in China, and how this is affecting the (re)construction of interracial gay male sexuality in the Chinese popular imagination. Building on a critical analysis of the construction of “Chinese top, British bottom” that articulates normative discourses of race, gender, sexuality, and nation, this study has advanced the critical inquiry into the intersection of race with gay male sexuality and developed a cultural understanding of topness/bottomhood in the Chinese context. It describes an attempt to respond to the need, as highlighted by Yep (2017), “to start producing more historically and culturally specific bodies of knowledge about sexual meanings, practices, and ways of inhabiting non-normativities in their own geopolitical systems” (p. 118). The narrative of RMIUC and J.T. has precipitated a heated online discussion, and the couple have received widespread attention from netizens both within and outside of China, which has made a significant contribution to the social visibility of gay men in light of their absence and stereotypical portrayal in Chinese mainstream media. Employing the strategy of remasculinization, RMIUC has legitimized himself as a masculinist and nationalistic gay icon and gained acceptance from the dominant heteronormative culture, which has further transformed him into a television and fashion celebrity. However, these methods of achieving social visibility and acceptance have been maintained at the expense of subordinating and marginalizing femininity and feminine embodiment, particularly a “Chinese bottomhood.” As such, “Chinese bottom” could be an ideal position from which to question multiple normativities and to build political coalitions among marginal groups across national boundaries.

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This study has interrogated the inextricable relationship between digital media technologies and sociocultural forces in the context of Chinese gay male sexuality, contributing to the field of intercultural new media studies (INMS) (Shuter, 2012) and increasing the understanding of queer intercultural communication in a new media age. Through a critical reading of the online fan discussions of RMIUC and J.T. and their story, the importance of audience in understanding China’s gay male Internet celebrity as a performative practice has been emphasized. The public images of RMIUC and J.T. are not passively received by their fans as consumers; rather, the cultural meanings of their stardom are actively created in the transmedia consumption of their fans across time and space. This relates to another issue in understanding celebrity culture in China and elsewhere, namely changing meanings. The cultural meanings of RMIUC (and J.T.) change over time. When RMIUC became a gay father via surrogacy in 2017, this marked another significant year in his celebrity practice. On November 3, 2017, he posted a photo on Instagram of himself holding his newborn son, Frederic, in the hospital, which quickly went viral and became one of his most-liked posts. Since then, he has used Instagram strategically to perform his gay fatherhood to his fans. On the one hand, RMIUC’s “gay father” Instagram posts challenge the heteronormative imagination of family and kinship. He has presented a new parent–child relationship without heterosexual marriage, performing a “queer” family setup that delinks marriage from childrearing/parenting and simultaneously questions the social norms against nonmarital childbirth in Chinese society (Zhou & Tao, 2018). On the other hand, RMIUC’s Internet celebrity practices also construct commercial surrogacy as the most desirable strategy for Chinese gay men to have children, supporting the idea of “blood relations” as the foundation of kinship. In this sense, gay kinship is arguably reducible to biological fact, which might marginalize other “inauthentic” forms of kinship (Zhou & Tao, 2018). RMIUC’s gay fatherhood has become an integral part of his Internet celebrity practice. He created an Instagram account for Frederic to document their daily life, which is followed by thousands of fans. Although Frederic’s digital presence has not yet been commercialized and presented to the market, he is becoming a “micromicrocelebrity” (Abidin, 2015), which warrants further, careful investigation regarding issues of privacy and child labor. RMIUC (and J.T.), as a complicated cultural construct, is a noteworthy platform on which gay male identities are simultaneously (re)constructed, maintained, and contested. Understanding the changing meanings of China’s gay male Internet celebrities can help one to address the communicative dimensions of culture and power, offering new insights into the conceptualization of gay male sexuality in contemporary China. From Duyao on MSN Space and J. Law–Kirio on Renren.com, to RMIUC on Sina Weibo and Instagram, as well as other rising gay male social media stars in a digitized

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China—for example, beauty blogger Benny and comedy vlogger Penoy Zhang—the landscape of China’s gay male Internet celebrities is becoming more complex, dynamic, evolved, and heterogeneous alongside the contemporary media culture in a rapidly changing Chinese society. It requires ongoing and further reflection to continue to unpack and challenge the “global–local circuits of White gay normativity” (Eguchi, 2015), and to “heal from the violence of heteronormativity in communication studies” (Yep, 2017). DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What factors have led to the success of LGBTQ (Internet) celebrities? 2. How do LGBTQ (Internet) celebrities perform their queerness? 3. How do digital communication technologies change our understanding of culture and communication? 4. What is the importance of sociocultural context to queer(y) intercultural communication? KEY WORDS • • • • • •

Interracial Gay Sexuality Internet Celebrity Online Fandom Boys’ Love Bottomhood China REFERENCES

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Theme 2

Spatialities

Chapter Five

Calaveras, Calacas, and Cultural Production The Queer Politics of Brown Belonging at U.S. Día de los Muertos Celebrations Megan Elizabeth Morrissey

It was a warm, blustery day when we wandered through the crowds at our hometown’s Día de los Muertos celebration. Drawn to the celebration after exploring the festival’s website, I learned that since it was first celebrated in our city in 2011, this Día de los Muertos festival has drawn increasingly large crowds and garnered more and more local support. Photographs from years past highlight onlookers snacking on churros, drinking Mexican hot chocolate, and enjoying the spectacle. Indeed, the visual and textual construction of this event evidences and immerses visitors in a cultural production that celebrates, commodifies, and creates opportunities for belonging. Events such as this Día de los Muertos festival represent a queer juxtaposition that plays at the intersection of normative U.S. discourses about death, citizenship, and the public/private divide. Our small city’s Día de los Muertos festival is one among hundreds that are now celebrated across the United States and is dwarfed by the scale of some of the nation’s largest events with which this chapter will engage. Regardless of size or scale, however, U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations have become commonplace in the United States and are complex sites of meaning production and negotiation. As a White queer woman and U.S. citizen, I explore the websites that construct and organize a city’s celebrations to produce a temporally and spatially constrained space where visitors are immersed in a queer cultural experience that is both familiar and strange, local and international, inclusive and exclusive. It is through these incongruities and the ways they are queerly negotiated within U.S. Día 99

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de los Muertos festivals that I argue that an opportunity for contingent Brown belonging is opened. Día de los Muertos is a holiday that is traditionally celebrated at the beginning of November and has origins in Latinx culture. Meant to honor the dead and invite them back home for an evening of lively celebration, Día de los Muertos combines indigenous Aztec and Catholic rituals. As a hybrid holiday, Día de los Muertos invites participants to travel across both physical and psychological borders, resulting in a mestizaje experience (Pineda, 2009) that blends and blurs indigenous and colonial practices and produces ambivalent, contradictory, and historically shifting iterations (Molina-Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004). Día de los Muertos has developed over the years to incorporate a variety of cultural elements and is oriented toward celebrating the lives of the deceased rather than mourning their passing, queering the traditionally somber experience of grief that so often characterizes U.S. public discourse about death. To honor the lives of those who have passed, families will often playfully commemorate the holiday by constructing ofrendas (or altars) in their memory. These commemorative constructions typically include candles, flowers, loved ones’ favorite food items, pan de muerto, 1 and photographs of the deceased. Intimate and personal, these ofrendas are a focal point of the holiday and characterize and organize the traditional temporalspatial experience of the celebration. Indeed, it is the queer incorporation of these ofrendas into U.S. celebrations that I focus on in this analysis, exploring how this traditional element of remembrance and celebration becomes a nodal point of incongruity that builds new relational bridges between White U.S. belonging and Brown Latinx inclusion. Celebrated in big cities and small towns across the United States and Mexico, Día de los Muertos has morphed through the years to become something that is contemporarily recognized as cool and hip (Dobrin, 2017). The cultural capital that the holiday garners comes from its recent presence in U.S. popular culture, including scenes from a Día de los Muertos parade that appeared in a James Bond film in 2015 (Dobrin, 2017), and most recently, in the form of Disney Pixar’s film Coco, which centered the holiday within the story’s plot line. Some of the United States’ largest Día de los Muertos events include those in Los Angeles, San Antonio, Chicago, and Fort Lauderdale, which have elicited attention from national news outlets for their size and spectacle. It is to these celebrations that I turn my critical attention. While each city’s event is organized in slightly different ways, I have chosen to focus on what they share in common—the ofrenda—unpacking the significance of this cultural emblem and examining the cultural work that its queering can produce. Specifically, I explore how the ofrenda is integrated into the festivities, visually, textually, and conceptually, by examining the websites that were constructed for the 2017 Día de los Muertos celebrations in these four major cities. 2

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As embodied cultural and artistic performances, Día de los Muertos festivities can be “central articulators of the people and of community” (Calafell & Delgado, 2004, p. 2); as such, understanding if and how they construct spaces of inclusion and belonging is important for recognizing the cultural work they perform. As I argue, U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations depend on incongruous constructions to enact a comic frame that queers U.S. understandings and relationships to/with Latinx culture, 3 ultimately producing contingent spaces of belonging for Brown bodies. Just as murals (LaWare, 1998) and discourses (Flores, 1996) can craft homelands, so, too, can cultural celebrations build bridges to constitute new possibilities for inclusion. To construct this argument, I will begin with a discussion of Burke’s (1984) perspective by incongruity and the comic frame and then examine how these concepts can be extended by and with queer intercultural theory. I will then move on to a more detailed discussion about how U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations queer the ofrenda’s traditional audience, form, and purpose to comically reconstitute U.S. cultural insiders’ relationships to Latinx people, and Latinx people’s inclusion into U.S. national spaces. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Within U.S. culture there is a reinvigorated discussion about the need to secure the nation’s borders and to punish those who have come to the United States illegally—a national attitude that contributes to Latinx people being read as “out of place” in U.S. spaces (Chávez, 2014; Cisneros, 2012; Flores, 2003). Cisneros (2012) explains, “Latina/os are presumed to have suspicious legal status regardless of their true standing, and something is ‘off’ about Latina/os’ affect (their race, language, cultural associations, etc.), even when they do ‘belong’ in a strictly legal or limited sense” (p. 141). With the United States’ election of Donald Trump, a brand of discourse characterized by explicit xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and nationalism has been recentered in the public sphere. This has meant that public discussion about building a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the refusal of refugees seeking asylum in the country, and a spectacularized commitment to “Make America Great Again” have explicitly governed the administration’s policy decisions, trickling down into vernacular conversations and interactions in which a culture of fear and hate is cultivated. The normative discourse of U.S. citizenship and belonging that circulates in the United States reinforces the notion that U.S. national identity and citizenship depend upon the simultaneous construction of an Other against which to clearly articulate the qualities and characteristics desirable in U.S. cultural insiders. Queer intercultural communication scholarship foregrounds Others’ ways of knowing, being, and acting in the world (Alexander, 2010;

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Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Calafell, 2015; Carrillo Rowe, 2008; Chávez, 2013; Gutierrez-Perez & Andrade, 2018; and Yep, 2013) to potentially create “new/alternative intellectual spaces of articulating and imagining intercultural communication” (Eguchi & Asante, 2016, p 175). Within these discourses, the ideal U.S. citizen is produced as White and heterosexual, against an Other that is Brown and queer (Calafell, 2012; Carter, 2007; Eguchi, 2015; Flores, 2003; Puar & Rai, 2002). Emphasizing the material, embodied, and intersectional experience of difference, queer intercultural scholarship and queer of color critique examines “the discursive and material effects of sexuality with particular attention to race, class, gender and the body” (Yep, 2013, p. 120). Specifically, queer intercultural communication provides a heuristic for making sense of the “fluid and complex processes and practices of sexuality, sex/gender, and the body” (Eguchi & Asante, 2016, p. 172), while emphasizing a multifaceted analysis, the importance of political activism, and the politics of language and translation (Chávez, 2013). Situated within these scholarly traditions, this analysis attends to the interplay between U.S. symbolic constructions of Día de los Muertos celebrations and the material production of culture—as well as the inclusions and exclusions—that such discourses produce. Foregrounding these considerations reveals that U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations do something complex within the U.S. public sphere—specifically, they move beyond cultural appropriation to produce something new that grows between both cultures. Normative U.S. discourses of citizenship such as those described above materialize what Burke has called a tragic frame that oversimplifies how we think about and consider the complexity of social relationships. Goltz (2007) explained, Through the negative and the “is not,” the tragic frame operates by establishing conceptions of good and evil. The hierarchy permits the elevation of a group to be deemed better, right, and moral, resulting in the inevitable lesser, wrong, and immoral other. (p. 2)

This oversimplification produces binary relationships and understandings that create barriers instead of bridges between cultural groups. Defined broadly as “the use of a culture’s symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture” (Rogers, 2006, p. 474), it might seem that U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations do little more than culturally appropriate the culture that contextualizes them. Elaborating on the concept of cultural appropriation, Shugart (1997) explained, “Appropriation refers to any instance in which means commonly associated and/or perceived as belonging to another are used to further one’s own ends” (p. 210). In the case of Día de los Muertos celebrations, festivities are produced with the participation and buy-in of members and representative of local Latinx communities.

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Specifically using a queer of color and queer intercultural orientation allows us to explore these festivities as hybrid or mestizaje spaces that produce opportunities to embody complex identities and relationships. Contemporary U.S. public discourse buzzes with anxiety about the need to keep U.S. (White) Americans safe from Latinx people illegally crossing our border and/or overextending U.S. resources. Consequently, stories of Latinx criminality infuse U.S. consciousness with the expectation that White, U.S. citizens are “better, right, and moral,” while Latinxs are “lesser, wrong, and immoral.” As Burke noted, there is no emancipatory power in the tragic frame but, instead, the steady reinforcement of flawed cultural logics that, here, do the work of reinvigorating racist and nationalist notions of White, U.S. superiority. Latinxs who are regularly constructed as outside of the parameters of U.S. citizenship and belonging are used as scapegoats to reinforce the authority and persuasive force of dominant U.S. culture. Within U.S. logics, the overly simplistic rendering of White-good/Brownbad demonstrates a tragic framework that characterizes much U.S. discourse about citizenship and belonging, but it is not duplicated in U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations, where a comic frame instead materializes. From its earliest roots, this holiday has blended life and death; however, within U.S. iterations of the holiday, the traditional elements of joy, happiness, and celebration are juxtaposed alongside what is often framed in the United States as grief, sadness, and mourning. This incongruous pairing of life and death is most clearly materialized in the production of the ofrenda, which is conceptualized as the point of spiritual crossing and communication between deceased loved ones and their living family members who invite them back. Treating the ofrenda as a metonym of Día de los Muertos’s larger and more complex cultural commitments, I argue that this negotiation of life and death lays the foundation for the comic corrective to queer U.S. attitudes toward, and relationships with, the Latinx community. Using a comic corrective can remedy the tragic cycle in which humans construct binary logics of perfection and imperfection (Ruekart, 1994; Goltz, 2007). According to Carlson (1988), Burke promoted his comic corrective to dismantle “the tragic cycle of human victimage to promote peaceful social change” (p. 310). As such, there is opportunity for negative U.S. construction of Latinx people to be revised in and through discourses that utilize a comic frame. Just as the ofrenda is imagined to build a bridge between the living and the dead, the integration of the ofrenda into U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations builds bridges between U.S. insiders and Latinx outsiders by both honoring and queering its original audience, form, and purpose. By replacing the either/or of the tragic frame with both/and, the ofrenda becomes a site of spiritual, symbolic, and material crossing that honors the original intentions of the holiday, while in the context of each city’s celebration, also morphing into something more culturally familiar to White U.S.

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Americans: a public display, a mediated message, and a cause for competition. U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations’ incorporation of the ofrenda remoralizes the relationship between White U.S. insiders and Brown Latinx outsiders through three orders of perspective by incongruity. According to Burke (1937), these orders include (1) methodology of the pun (in which a constant juxtaposition of incongruous words produces a new/emergent meaning), (2) de-linking (which pries the incongruous terms away from their assumed contexts), and (3) casuistic stretching (which produces opportunities for incongruous terms to relink or overlap with other ideas) (Young, 2010). This transformative reconstitution (Goltz, 2007) revises what was once a binary opposition (insider/outsider) so that the opposition no longer exists and so that new relational possibilities (participant/audience member) are opened up. In the tradition of queer of color and queer intercultural scholarship, this attention to hybrid and contradictory identities becomes a basis for both knowing and acting in the world. Where mainstream queer theory is limited insofar as its use and application is perhaps too deconstructionist for its telos to be clearly imagined—that is, an overinvestment in the destabilization of fixed categories of identity to be meaningful or productive to non-Western, non-White, noncisgender experience—perspective by incongruity provides a way for critics to consider queering as a verb that has generative potential (Goltz, 2007). Goltz (2007) argues that through “shifting the focus from queer spaces to queering spaces, queer becomes a bridge to the unknown rather than a predetermined destination” (p. 10). Chen (2012) further asserts that the verb form of queer retains more radical potential as a result of its dynamism than its noun form, which has too often been applied as a static identity category to which individuals subordinate themselves. Theorizing the relationship between queer theory and perspective by incongruity then means marking a crossing such that the latter becomes “an act of undetermined generative potential that transforms meaning through relational dialectic” (Goltz, 2007, p. 10). Emphasizing the communal ties and collective resistance that structure queer of color experience (Calafell, 2015; Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Johnson, 2001; Muñoz, 1999), perspective by incongruity provides a lens through which to explore how such identities, relationships, and performances are politicized in the United States. If we allow ourselves to see some of the nation’s largest Día de los Muertos celebrations as performances that queer space (insofar as such events temporarily re-create social relationships and attitudes about Latinx people and culture), we can theorize how incongruity and the comic corrective operate therein to create something new and different that exists beyond the scope of normative U.S. discourses and logics.

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Placing perspective by incongruity in conversation with queer theory produces two contributions that this chapter expands upon. First, Goltz (2007) suggests, The queer concept is grounded, not in definition, but through an ongoing process that does not function to limit, solidify, or restrict its potentiality. The queer objective is reframed from the potential of tragic anti-normative positioning to the ongoing process of tactical interventions, bridges extending outwards from tragic frames. (p. 11)

Such tactical interventions, in addition to creating bridges that extend outward from tragic frames, have also been theorized as mechanisms of survival and subversion by queer of color and queer intercultural scholars (Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Muñoz, 1999), producing new opportunities for identities and relationships to develop. In this way, U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations’ integration of the ofrenda, which incongruously realigns life/death, public/private, and insider/outsider positions, participates in a tradition of disruption that here is explained through the lens of perspective by incongruity. Resisting the binary logic that would isolate Latinx cultural practice from U.S. White mainstream culture, U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations blend elements of each culture to make something new—something that resists easy categorization. This second contribution in which pairing queer theory and perspective by incongruity demonstrates how “queerness becomes a project of reconstitution and transformation, which locates queer objectives at the very sites queers have struggled to negotiate” (Goltz, 2007, p. 11). As queer of color and queer intercultural communication scholars have suggested, attending to the embodied, fluid, and intersectional qualities of identity, the body itself is recognized as a site of struggle (Calafell, 2012; Johnson 2001; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983). As such, attending to the materiality of one’s body—the flesh—challenges the critic to consider how embodied intersections of identity build new categories of existence and belonging from and through which people engage the world around them. As a White queer woman who is also a U.S. citizen, I am drawn into the folds of the nation and am simultaneously forced to mark my difference from them. This movement between insider and outsider status has always compelled me to look to the experience of others who occupy their own positions of marginality and to find community there. Día de los Muertos celebrations play at the boundaries of U.S. cultural life in ways that are familiar to me and that make me wonder about the potentialities of such celebrations. Not all Día de los Muertos celebrations offer this potentiality, nor can we look to these cultural events as a way to definitively include otherwise marginalized populations. In spite of this, as we turn our critical attention to these four celebrations and

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the way they center the ofrenda, what we begin to see are how these altars function as rhetorical productions, doing cultural work that reconstitutes and transforms the bodies of White U.S. celebrants as participants in this cultural celebration (not simply passive cultural consumers), revising conceptions of who is an insider and who is an outsider. ANALYSIS Within normative U.S. discourses, citizenship is framed as something of value that people must demonstrate they deserve through public performances of their own contribution to the nation. Morrissey (2015) explains, “Within the United States, (in)valuability plays an important function, marking some identities as being worth more than others, and generating and maintaining criteria for that worth along the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality” (p. 130). Through these dominant cultural logics, non-White, nonheterosexual bodies are seen as depleting the nation’s resources and not giving anything substantive in return for the protections and benefits of their citizenship status. These logics materialize the tragic framework from which familiar narratives of Black welfare cheats pillaging the system, Brown illegal immigrants attacking White law-abiding citizens, and Middle Eastern terrorists threatening U.S. values, institutions, and citizens derive. Morrissey (2015) further explains, “For raced individuals to be understood as abiding post-racial citizens of the nation—indeed for them to be included within its folds—they must make careful arguments about their value to the nation” (p. 129). A close analysis of the websites developed to direct celebrants and otherwise curious onlookers to these festivals reveals the extensive negotiation of this cost-benefit dialectic, along with corresponding consideration to public/private cultural performances that value people and bodies and their contribution to the nation in hierarchical ways. The practice and performance of culture that is cast within the tragic framework as isolating Latinx individuals from U.S. belonging because it makes them different is within Día de los Muertos festivals, positively recognized, celebrated, and financially supported. In all four festivals I examined, major U.S. corporations had provided enough money to produce the event that their names and logos were displayed on primary home pages for the events. Included among them were national brands like Corona, Jose Cuervo, Southwest Airlines, the American Red Cross, Starbucks, and Disney Pixar’s film Coco. These celebrations are some of the biggest in the nation, and their scale is certainly enabled by these large and culturally familiar corporate sponsors that lend credibility and grow the audience (and potential impact) that such celebrations may have. Thus, in a queerly incongruous turn, U.S. corporate sponsorship of these celebrations transforms what was once an

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intimate community ritual into something of a much larger scale, dismantling the expectation that Brown bodies must practice and perform their culture privately (or elsewhere), and that their cultural difference is a burden. In this way, the tragic binaries of public/private, cost/benefit, and insider/outsider are comically reconstituted in/through U.S. celebrations of the holiday that revise the altar’s audience, form, and purpose so that White U.S. Americans encounter and experience Brown Latinx culture in more participatory ways. The Ofrenda Constructing an ofrenda to honor the lives of deceased loved ones is a primary part of Día de los Muertos celebrations. Altars, traditionally constructed in people’s homes or in cemeteries to show the family’s dead their way home, are intricate and detailed displays that include a variety of Aztec and Latinx cultural influences. Among these are a large photograph of the deceased loved one that serves as a centerpiece of the altar. This is generally accompanied by water or fruit punch, pan de muerto, salt, some of the deceased’s favorite knickknacks or foods, marigolds, papel picado, candles, and sugar skulls (also called calaveras) (Valdez, 2009). Each of these elements carry with them historical and cultural meanings that are intended to create a sentiment of familiarity and celebration for a deceased loved one’s return. The marigolds reflect the “fleeting nature of life and their aroma helps lure the spirits back. The particular colors of papel picado can reflect death, grief, mourning, celebration and hope; and the calaveras add a lighthearted touch to render death less frightening and sad” (Menendez, 2009). Many (if not all) of these traditional elements find their way into contemporary ofrendas and are integrated as a primary part of U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations. Within U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations, the function that the altar plays publicizes cultural difference and situates such performances within the neoliberal framework that assigns value to these enactments precisely based on that cultural difference. The neoliberal national investments that organize U.S. culture require a public performance of one’s value to the nation and a private (and subsequently depoliticized) practice of cultural difference (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). In this way, the very things that tragic discourses of U.S. citizenship use to mark the boundaries of belonging and marginalization (the public performance and display of cultural difference) here become the tactical intervention (Goltz, 2007) that incongruously reconstitutes U.S. inclusion via a queering of public/private, insider/outsider, cost/benefit binaries. These incongruities are played out in unique ways across each celebration. Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles’s Olvera Street’s celebrations provide a public space for otherwise private altars to be displayed, queering the intended audience and challenging cultural conceptions of what should be

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shared, how it should be shared, and with whom it should be shared. Chicago and San Antonio’s celebrations reinterpret the form of the altar, taking it from a homemade construction of personal artifacts to an artistic production of manipulated mediums, compelling visitors to see the ofrenda as a cultural object to be admired rather than a spectacularized cultural display. Finally, San Antonio’s celebration renegotiates the altar’s purpose, transforming it from an invitational and commemorative gateway for the return of the deceased to a contest submission, blurring the purpose and motivation of the ofrenda. This change in an altar’s placement (private space to public space), medium (homemade to artistic exhibition), and purpose (remembrance to competition), incongruously produces new relational possibilities that depend upon the juxtaposition, prying apart, and relinking of the ofrenda in U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations. Comically Reconstituting Audience Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles’s Olvera Street’s Día de los Muertos festivals provide an opportunity for any local groups or community members to publicly display an ofrenda that they construct in honor of a deceased loved one. Fort Lauderdale’s festival website explains, “Community members, artists and schoolchildren all present personal memories of those whom they have lost in striking visual presentations” (Florida Day of the Dead, para. 2), noting that anyone wishing to participate must simply email festival planners with a request. Although Olvera Street’s festival does not provide information on how to participate, it advertises that community altars will be on display for all nine days of their celebration and features several photos of previous celebrations’ altars. The images that are catalogued on both of these sites present ofrendas that appear personal—displaying items and artifacts of a loved one’s life that might not be as personally significant to festival visitors as they would be to family members who knew the deceased. Both celebrations incongruously position the traditionally intimate altar (intimate insofar as it is intended for display within the domestic space of the house or at a loved one’s grave site, and for an audience of family members and friends) within the U.S. public sphere. In this way, U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations figuratively and materially relocate Latinx people within a neoliberal matrix that values their cultural contribution. Characterizing their festivities as “destination” (San Antonio) or “signature” (Fort Lauderdale) events, these celebrations capitalize on tourists and visitors who travel to these cities for their Día de los Muertos events, producing spatially and temporally bound social microcosms in which the tragic frame that isolates and marginalizes cultural difference is queered. These festivals’ juxtaposition of public and private bridges the divide between these two polarities, instead offering a new middle ground that exceeds cultural appropriation. It

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is in and through these festivities that Latinx bodies are recognized as appropriately “culture bearing” (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010) and where Latinx people are empowered to practice, perform, and share their culture with White U.S. citizens. Specifically, this queering of public and private occurs when death and its private U.S. experiences of grief and sadness are flipped and made public through the construction and display of ofrendas at these “destination” Día de los Muertos festivals. Comically Reconstituting “Form” Like the other Día de los Muertos celebrations discussed in this chapter, Chicago’s Día de los Muertos festival invites community members and groups to construct and present their own ofrendas at the festival. Additionally, 2017 festival organizers extended the opportunity for people to upload a picture of a loved one that they wanted to remember so that guest artist Fernando Sic (“Rimiyoho”) could use them in his creation of a live animation he projected on a museum’s exterior. These larger-than-life images represent a digitization of the ofrenda’s traditional form. Rimiyoho’s live animation cycled through the uploaded photos one at time, creating a large-scale and multi-soul remembrance that comically reconstituted the medium of the traditional ofrenda while maintaining its traditional purpose to honor, celebrate, and welcome the dead. Although a traditional ofrenda is small enough to fit into a person’s home or upon a loved one’s grave site and is visible only to those with access to those private spaces, Chicago’s celebration takes the intention of the altar (to celebrate the life of a deceased loved one and to guide the soul home) and reinterprets it—mediating it, rendering it larger, and expanding the potential audience for each remembrance. The way that Chicago’s event juxtaposes traditional elements of the ofrenda with new mediated technology delinks Latinx bodies from the tragic framework that characterizes Latinx culture as burdensome (read overly culture-bearing, primitive, and isolated) to instead reconstitute it as culturally complex, sophisticated, and well integrated. Specifically, the change in medium makes the altar more ephemeral—more symbolic—and potentially less threatening to U.S. audiences whose affective response to the presence of Latinx material bodies is suspicion and rejection. Thus, the response to the symbolic construction and celebration of Brown bodies that occurs through mediated channels that abstract Latinx people and culture makes them less of a threat. Specifically, the space of Chicago’s celebration encourages appreciation and respect for the artistic rendering of the remade, digitized altar (and by extension, Latinx culture), producing a temporal and spatial moment in which Latinx people are included via the artist’s public installation of a traditionally private, culture-bearing performance.

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San Antonio’s festival similarly featured an artist’s rendering of an ofrenda as part of the city’s celebration. The city commissioned a floating altar by artist Ana Fernandez that was designed to travel down the city’s central river, flanked by the famous River Walk, the city’s primary attraction, and that honored San Antonio’s “Chili Queens” who used to sell their chili con carne along the river. The festival’s website details the artist’s statement, contextualizing the floating altar within a regional history that signals the significance of the River Walk to the city and that marks these women’s contributions. In particular, the Chili Queens were eventually banished from downtown due to health concerns related to open-air dining. The artist explains: When I was approached to submit an idea for a floating altar, the chili queens came to mind. Besides being of personal significance to me, this floating altar also serves to mark the culinary and cultural achievements made by these women and once again honor their legacy in the City of San Antonio. (“New in 2017: Floating Altar Created by Ana Fernandez,” para. 3)

Responding to the cultural and spatial surround that will accommodate her floating altar, Fernandez constructs an ofrenda that is politically, culturally, and socially significant and whose presence on the river queers the history and the present iteration of the space. In this way, Fernandez, like Rimiyoho, participates in a revision of the ofrenda’s traditional form that comically reconstitutes the altar, as well as the space and place in which it circulates, affecting the kind of cultural work it can do. Placing the altar on top of a barge that will travel along the River Walk positions the life and the historical influence of these previously marginalized women within the heart of the city and makes the altar something that people take note of because of its difference, not in spite of it. In other words, although the Chili Queens were noticed (and systematically removed from the city’s central landscape), presumably for their brownness, cultural difference, and nonmainstream economy, they are here noticed and appreciated because of the ofrenda’s unnatural presence along the river. In this way, the altar’s mobility along and through a space that once banished the women whose lives are here remembered not only celebrates their lives but politicizes their legacy, materially and symbolically recentering them within the city’s cultural history and queering the historical legacy and contemporary landscape of the city. Thus, in the vein of previous queer of color and queer intercultural communication scholarship that has analyzed the creative ways that marginalized people work within and against the systems that exclude them, we see how incongruity and the comic frame are also ways in which the center and the margins can be refigured.

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Comically Reconstituting “Purpose” The revisions to the traditional ofrenda’s audience and form are two central elements that comically reconstitute normative U.S. discourses about citizenship and belonging, blurring the boundaries between insider and outsider. Unlike the events in Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and Chicago, however, San Antonio’s Día de los Muertos celebration features an altar competition. This is noteworthy because it takes the ofrenda and queers its purpose, making it something that can be evaluated. Competition is a central tenet of neoliberalism insofar as it produces a hierarchical system in which those citizens who are most flexible and least culture-bearing can rise to “the top” and experience success (measured by financial stability and social inclusion) (Hasinoff, 2008; Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). Thus, to queer the altar’s original purpose of remembrance by also making it about competition positions Latinx people within a superstructural framework that makes them more familiar to abiding White U.S. citizens. Whether a community group, high school, or individual, anyone who wants to construct an altar and compete in San Antonio’s competition is able. A photo collection of each 2017 entrant is available on the Muertos Fest website, enabling physical and virtual visitors to cast their votes for their favorite. One of the altars, earning 424 votes, the most of any submission, was an entry by Jourdanton High School in memory of two students, Madison and Tanner McCleary, who had passed away. The altar includes a large photo of the siblings framed with tissue-paper marigolds and accompanied by a traditional three-tiered altar with photos, sugar skulls, candles, and school uniforms. This high school’s altar competed with 27 other entries, some produced by other groups, some produced by individual families, such as the Rodriguez Family, whose altar “Nuestra Madre y Hermana” featured many of the same traditional elements but was designed to celebrate the life of the entrant’s mother. Incentivizing participation in the altar competition with a cash reward ($2000, $1000, or $500) potentially changes the motivation that people may have for participating. Thus, constructing an ofrenda becomes about both the traditional elements of the holiday (celebrating the life of a deceased loved one) and about meeting neoliberal expectations that celebrate competition. This “both/and” logic organizes the construction of San Antonio’s altars to feature both traditional and neoliberal messages. This queering of the ofrenda’s purpose builds a bridge that legitimizes Latinx cultural inclusion by comically reconstituting “success” as inherently including a public performance of cultural difference. More complexly, the competitive twist that frames the altars’ purpose at Muertos Fest affects how audiences (website visitors and festival attendees) read participants’ intentions, coming to see participants in and through the familiar U.S. framework of competition—a lens that blurs the binary distinction of us/them and complicates the relation-

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ship between White and Brown, as we have seen from other queer intercultural scholarship. CONCLUSION Enabling people to observe themselves while participating in the world (Burke, 1937), the comic frame promotes a heightened consciousness about situations and individuals’ involvement in them. U.S. Día de los Muertos events enmesh visitors in a queerly incongruous and temporary space that requires they engage with the very culture-bearing practices that are described as limiting many Latinx individuals’ assimilation into the nation. Indeed, in its best sense, the comic perspective “allows people to cultivate a great sense of compassion toward oneself and others while also revealing possible alternative paths for the future” (Lowery, Renegar, & Goehring, 2014, p. 60). These U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations do not provide a utopian futurity or even guarantee more meaningful inclusion for the Latinx community, but perhaps the incongruity that these festivals produce queers the oversimplistic frameworks in U.S. discourse that mark White U.S. bodies as good and legal and Brown bodies as bad and illegal. Through this queering, U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations build a bridge between these binaries that opens up temporally and spatially constrained possibilities for Brown belonging that have the potential to reframe how White U.S. community members understand their (and the nation’s) relationship to Latinx people. This happens when elements of the celebration “remoralize” Brown bodies as participants in U.S. culture and the economy rather than beneficiaries of its symbolic and material capital. The complexity of citizenship and belonging are thus revealed in these moments as these Día de los Muertos celebrations do more than appropriate and commodify Latinx people and culture for the benefit of White U.S. systems and institutions. Instead, they create symbolic openings and material spaces in and through which Latinx people can imagine and affect new cultural identifications and relationships. The hybrid or mestizaje space of these U.S. Día de los Muertos celebrations depend upon the creativity and fluidity of difference to (re)define the conditions of inclusion and acceptance. Identifying the incongruous elements of these four Día de los Muertos celebrations conceptualizes the queer potential of such events to open up spaces for inclusion between citizen and immigrant. As Goltz (2007) critiqued of queer theory’s tendency for abstraction, As a communication scholar, one of the most fundamental principles we teach in public speaking courses is the power of concrete language to work in the minds of the audience. The abstract lacks a mental image. We can’t see its

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potential for what “might be” lacks physical properties and is less effective as a rhetorical strategy. (p. 10)

Echoing queer of color and queer intercultural communication scholars’ arguments that the body is a site of knowledge, the four Día de los Muertos celebrations discussed in this chapter organize celebrants’ bodies in material ways in which both/and replaces either/or. This queering “becomes a bridge to the unknown rather than a predetermined destination” (Goltz, 2007, p. 10). In this way, the incongruities evidenced in these events demonstrate a crossing between U.S. cultural discourses of citizenship and belonging and Latinx marginalization that transforms the meaning of both. Thus, through this analysis we can theorize the potential and limitations of highly visible and popular cultural celebrations for increasing cultural competence and inclusion, as well as demonstrate how queerness and the practice of queering might be imagined in the transformative vein that queer of color and queer intercultural communication scholarship suggests. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. How can we know and/or argue that a cultural practice or celebration is a cultural appropriation or something more inclusive? What does exploring these Día de los Muertos celebrations reveal about cultural hybridity? 2. What is the relationship between Burke’s comic frame and the practice of queering? How does the comic frame make something “queer,” and what is the utility of seeing it as such? 3. Burke suggests that the tragic frame is something that produces overly simplistic binary representations of social relationships. What are some of the ways that marginalized groups (think of race, gender, sexuality, religion) are represented through tragic frameworks in U.S. public discourse? What kind of material implications do these discourses have? 4. What are the possibilities and limitations of using the comic corrective (generally) and queer theory (specifically) to make sense of U.S. race relationships and the social hierarchy that they organize? KEY WORDS • • • •

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• Perspective by Incongruity NOTES 1. This is a sweet bread that is traditionally made to celebrate Día de los Muertos. 2. I selected these four locations because they each appeared on three separate nationally circulated lists of “Best Día de los Muertos Celebrations,” including Thrillist, USA Today, and Latina, and they were geographically dispersed. 3. Capturing a cultural identity and experience of Latinidad (or the presumably shared ethnicity, culture, language, and history of being from Central or South America but living in the United States), Latinx is a term that attempts to move beyond gender binaries sedimented in terms like Latino, Latina, and Latin@.

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Chapter Six

Ain’t My First Rodeo in Homonormative Whiteness Queer Intercultural Lessons from the International Gay Rodeo Community Dawn Marie D. McIntosh

I make my way to the arena; everything looks and feels familiar. The bucking stock are swishing their tails and stomping flies as they carelessly walk about their pen looking for lingering morsels of hay. I am drawn to bucking horses. Their untamed nature is so beautiful to me. The smell of wet dirt from a freshly dragged arena fills the air. The EMT and large-animal vet parked ringside serve as subtle reminders of the dangers of this sport. Two White drag queens with large crowns and huge silk sashes appear from behind the bucking chutes. They stop and pose for a White woman to take a picture. I am quickly reminded just what rodeo I am attending. In this moment, similarity and difference collide within my body. While my thin White female body blends beautifully into the rodeo backdrop, my ease coming from my years of riding, I am also strikingly different because I am a straight cisgendered mother of three children who is married to a cisgendered White man. This collision of similarities and differences confuses me. Suddenly, I am aware of my sexuality—a marking that I am generally privileged to overlook. I am tentative to my belonging here and question the ethics of my presence. I am jarred from my reflections by the blaring of the rodeo announcer that muffles the tractors finishing their last carefully tilled lines of arena dirt. He yells, “Who’s ready for some rodeo?!” The crowd begins to cheer and the familiar excitement of rodeos floods over me. What I was not expecting to experience as I walked up the cement stairs to my first International Gay Rodeo Association (henceforth: IGRA) rodeo 117

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was lessons of White homonormativity by this community. The growing acceptance of the LGBTQ community and the “trending” adoration for gay inclusivity by U.S. neoliberal politics has infiltrated the U.S. cowboy culture in specific manners, enunciating the problems of what Duggan (2002) termed the “new homonormativity.” Many scholars have examined how the growing visibility of queer politics has adversely transposed specific queer embodiments into normative cultural frameworks, or homonormativity (e.g., Duggan, 2002, 2003; Santos, 2013). More specifically, homonormativity, from a theoretical conceptualization, exposes the neocolonial push for certain U.S. queer embodiments and particular gay bodies (U.S. White, middle-class gay and lesbians) to be economically, governmentally, socially, and globally embraced in order to recenter whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Put best by Puar (2006), “While queer bodies may be disallowed, there is room for the absorptions and management of homosexuality—temporally, historically, and spatially specific—when advantageous for US national interests” (p. 72). Homonormativity scholarship not only looks at the disciplining natures of homonormativity on the queer community, but it also, as Calafell and Nakayama (2016) point out, interrogates how “gays and lesbians may be performing identities in ways that are consistent with larger ideologies of heteronormativity and with White U.S. nationalism” (p. 2). Kennedy (2014) adds that while much queer scholarship traces the connections between normativity and LGQ depictions, “few have noted how whiteness operates in these directions” (p. 120). Queer scholars of color have long critiqued queer scholarship’s lack of acknowledgment of race (e.g., Chávez, 2013; Johnson, 2013; Johnson, 2005; Johnson & Henderson, 2005; Lee, 2003; Yep, 2013). This scholastic disregard in and of itself denotes the powerful overlap of whiteness and homonormativity. Whiteness scholars have long noted whiteness’s ability to erase race from identity politics to empower White bodies (Nakayama and Krizek, 1995; Crenshaw, 1997; Warren, 2003), center White cultural norms (Alcoff, 2015; McIntosh, Moon, & Nakayama, 2019; McIntosh, 2014), and remove the reality of racism (McIntosh, 2018; Moon, 2016; Calafell, 2015). First coined by Kennedy (2014), White homonormativity is coupled together “as a way to capture the relationship that emerges among whiteness, homonormativity and lesbian visibility” (p. 121). White homonormativity reminds queer intercultural communication scholars of the importance of reading sexuality intersectionally (Cohen, 2005; Eguchi, 2018), and how removing race allows queer scholarship to be a driving entity for queer normativity (Carter, 2009; Davy, 1995; Duggan, 2003; Kennedy, 2014; Muñoz, 1999; Puar, 2007; Ward, 2008; Yep & Elia, 2012). Yep and Elia (2012) offer an imperative example of racialized readings of homonormativity through their examination of Logo’s Noah’s Arc. Specifically, they articulate homonormativity’s

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erasure of race and racism in their examination of the show’s portrayal and conversations around a physical attack of one of the show’s lead characters. Yep and Elia (2012) demonstrate that since the attack was reduced to just gay bashing, “the viewer is directed to focus on a single vector of oppression— sexuality—rather than the intersections of sexuality, race, and gender performance. In the process, it maintains the hegemonic ideology that racism is over and forecloses an opportunity to talk about race and racism” (p. 898). They expose how sexuality and sexual politics are forefronted to erase the presence of racism, functioning to recenter the postracial lie that U.S. racism is a thing of the past. Certainly, homonormativity is always driven by ideologies of whiteness, but I find using this theoretical coupling of White homonormativity reminds readers, and myself, of the specific workings of whiteness in and through homonormativity present within queer cultural spaces. White homonormativity brings clarity to my reflections of the IGRA and its community. Furthermore, I adhere to Brown’s (2012) critique of homonormativity scholarship, in that it solely studies queer politics in visible representations and on grand scales rather than exposing homonormative workings in and through the lived experiences of LGBTQ persons. Therefore, it is important to interrogate the workings of whiteness as a function of homonormativity through not only mediated representations of LGBTQ community but more importantly by tracing White homonormativity in the embodied acts and cultural spaces by the queer community. In response, this chapter examines these embodiments of White homonormativity by the White gay cowboys and cowgirls in the queer space of gay rodeos. I would be remiss if I did not also hold tightly to the queering desire of possibility (Muñoz, 2009) and note the moments of queer transgression also present within the IGRA. The remainder of this chapter examines how the neocolonial constructions of White cowboys are reproduced in gay rodeos by questioning how queerness is absorbed into normative White U.S. rodeo culture to manifest frames of power around sexuality, race, and gender. RESEARCHING RODEOS “Mary, Mary . . . Mary! I want you to meet somebody, come here! Mary, this is Dawn. She’s thinking of joining.” “Hi, Dawn. So, you want to join the gay rodeo, huh?” “Well, I’m not sure about that but next year I’ll be back to watch. And I definitely think my kids should ride in the kid gay rodeo.” Mary responds to me, “You know, I think that is great when straight people join. Really. I am accepting of everyone except those trans people. I mean, I just don’t understand why you would want to go through all that to

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become a man. And then have the nerve to ask us for money! Wouldn’t you agree?” “Well . . . I guess I have very different experiences with my transgender friends,” I reluctantly reply. Margret walks back to the table and takes the floor again. “You know, Dawn is doing research on the gay rodeo.” She looks to me, then to Mary, and walks away from the table. I smile and begin to explain what that means only to be silenced by Mary. “Huh?” Mary interjects sharply. “I’ve never been researched before. You like researching us gay folks? Do you find me interesting or something?” Silence. This silence grows from the cultural juxtaposition of not only our sexuality differences but also our gender and age differences. My younger White feminine gender performance of femininity submits to Mary’s older White masculine and aggressive gender performance of femininity. Confrontational avoidance through silence is my White, straight feminine cultural reaction to years of White masculine aggression. I begin to laugh uncomfortably. She does not join my awkward giggle. Instead, she brings a cigarette to her wilted lips with her weathered White hand. I pause. “Yes, Mary,” I force my eyes to look up. “You are very interesting. . . .” My voice trails off as she turns toward the dance floor, unamused by the gay cowboys dancing on each other, finding interest only in her cigarette. Queer intercultural communication is bound to the body. The complex understandings of our identities come to be in the material realities of our flesh and bones. Holding true to centering the body, I believe qualitative and performance studies methods are key research tools to conduct queer intercultural communication research (e.g., Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Calafell, 2009; Eguchi, 2015). As Conquergood (2013) and Madison (2011) have emphasized, critical performance ethnography grows from traditional understandings of ethnographic practice but centers the research on embodied knowledges and, furthermore, on the politics of power culturally present. Reflexivity is the key tool critical performance ethnographers utilize to understand our relational embodied knowledges and ensure an ethical examination of the politics of power present. 1 This critical performance ethnography is queer intercultural communication research not simply because it is an LGBTQ community researched but more so because the theoretical lens examining this research site holds a critical intersectional eye to understand the politics of queer bodies through race, sexuality, gender, ability, and class. Queer intercultural communication scholarship is ethically responsible for understanding embodied politics of not only sexuality and homophobia but racism, classism, sexism, cissexism, xenophobia, and ageism. These colliding oppressions are best identified through a critical lens that centers on and through our bodies.

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This is certainly not “my first rodeo” when it comes to critical performance ethnography. Nonetheless, the same research insecurities continue to haunt me and frame my methodological approaches as I research a space that is familiar yet different from me. Tomaselli, Dyll, and Francis (2008) claim, “Ethnography is not simply a collection of the exotic ‘other’; it is reflective of our own lives and cultural practices even when discussing another culture” (p. 348). Riding horses is not a hobby for me; it is my lifestyle. While my riding background is in English show jumping, rodeos are not a novel space to me. Mary is no different from others in the cowboy culture I am immersed in daily. Yet insecurities flood over me as I, a straight, younger White mother, sit across from and look into the eyes of an aged White lesbian. How do I as a straight, White woman “research us gay folks”? Is it even ethical for me to challenge Mary on her trans politics when I myself have never had to experience the sociocultural pains of difference for my sexuality? Madison (2008) encourages: “The position of being both an ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ suggests that one possesses a certain kind of knowledge or authority regarding the relational dynamics of two contrasting or competing worlds” (p. 398). I find solace knowing that my familiarity with the culture has brought me to this space, and my difference provides me “a certain kind of knowledge” that is fruitful (p. 398). Ethnographic research is messy and complex because it requires that we work with/in people and culture. My job as an ethnographer is not to find all the answers hidden within cultural spaces; instead, as Tomaselli, Dyll, and Francis (2008) reassure, “identifying the ‘something’ is a key task” (p. 349). As a critical performance ethnographer, these “somethings” come through the intersections of my positionalities and the embodied politics of those I am researching. Here in the colliding of identities and conflating of spaces I come to small moments that strike me or awaken me later in my reflections. Conversations that stay with me, experiences that confuse me, circumstances that create discomfort: these are the “somethings” that I write about and come to understand through the help of theories. Theory guides me and holds me reflexively accountable. I look to the wisdom of many feminists/queer scholars of color to guide me through my ethnographic haze. This critical performance ethnography is no different. Arrizón (2006), Calafell (2015), Eguchi (2018), Silva (2016), Muñoz (1999, 2009), Puar (2006), and Yep and Elia (2012) collectively with my participants reflexively directed my readings of this queer intercultural space. I first learned of the IGRA when I was beginning my ethnographic research on the hunter/jumper equestrian community in 2010. I was reminded of the gay rodeos when my oldest brother came to visit me in 2017. Attempting to find entertainment that my small town in Colorado could offer his San Francisco lifestyle, I suggested we go to the IGRA rodeo. When searching for different gay rodeo events, I fell on the movie Queens and Cowboys: A Straight Year of Gay Rodeo, which follows the IGRA and introduces key

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figures and cultural challenges of gay rodeos (Livadary, 2014). I finally attended an IGRA rodeo in the summer of 2018. Since that time, I have attended two rodeos in Colorado and an IGRA rodeo awards ceremony. Prior to going, I did not know anyone associated with the IGRA, but while there I met a few board members, participants, and regulars. While at the rodeos and events, I would take notes on a small notepad and then, upon returning home, I would reflect on my different experiences by expanding my ethnographic notes into an ethnographic journal. These notes and my journal reflections became a primary reference for my research. I read these notes a couple of times and then looked for themes. Once themes were isolated, I conducted two unstructured interviews, one with a CGRA (Colorado Gay Rodeo Association) board member and another with an IGRA cowboy participant. My relationship with this community has blossomed into continued friendships. Years later I continue to maintain relationships with the friends I have made at the IGRA. Indeed, Mary is interesting. These “gay folks” taught me so much about rodeo, race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. U.S. WHITE HOMOEXCEPTIONALISM The opening ceremony mirrors the norms of mainstream rodeo practices. Men and women on horses come galloping into the arena adorning the flags of the rodeo. At mainstream rodeos, the parading of flags is done between each event. Rodeo queens carry the rodeo event sponsors’ flags around the arena as the winner of that event takes a celebratory lap. At the IGRA, there are no sponsor flags, only the flags of the rodeo for the opening ceremony. A small buckskin quarter horse with a White man in a baby blue pearlsnap shirt and starched Wrangler jeans comes galloping into the arena carrying the American flag. Close behind, a gangly black running quarter horse gallops into the ring, head flipping and appearing slightly uncontrolled by the White man riding. His rider holds his reins high in the air, attempting to balance himself and the Canadian national flag. There is a short lull before a bay quarter horse enters the ring, slowly loping. The White man’s black long-sleeve shirt outlines his thin frame as the remaining material flaps behind him. His arm bobbles as he holds a white flag with the IGRA emblem. Behind him, another White man in a white button-up shirt and starched jeans rides a light bay horse wildly pounding the ground directly behind the horse in front of him. This pair adorns the CGRA flag. Finally, in enters the Pride flag to conclude the parade of colors, and the crowd cheers loudly. After completing the gallop around the arena, the horses line up facing the crowd with their backs to the announcer’s booth and bucking chutes. The horses stand patiently, some better than others, as the buckskin with the American

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flag steps forward. Through the bucking chutes, a young White cowboy slowly walks to the middle of the arena. The announcer interjects, “Please rise and remove cover as we sing our national anthem.” I stand and watch as the young cowboy begins to sing. As the song concludes, I turn to find my seat when the announcer requests, “As many of you know, we are an internationally recognized organization. Please remain standing for the Canadian anthem.” Another young cowboy walks to the center of the arena and takes the microphone. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. Unfolding it, he clears his throat as the Canadian national anthem music begins. He joins the music a bit late and stumbles through the first few lines. He then stops and asks, “Wait, wait, can we start that over?” The music stops. Silence. Someone in the crowd screams, “You got this, Ryan!” And others encouragingly clap and cheer. The music begins again, as Ryan reads and somewhat sings the lyrics through to completion this time. He ends by curtsying and sashays back to the bucking chutes. Before I can process the singing mishap, a rodeo board member is introduced, and he begins to pray over the rodeo. I bow my head, “Dear Lord, we thank you for this beautiful day and for the ability to rodeo.” He finishes with, “And whatever god you worship, may they protect these cowboys and cowgirls today. And may we love each other. Amen.” I lift my head. The procession of flags is led by the American flag, then the Canadian flag, IGRA flag, CGRA flag, and finally the Pride flag. I slowly return to my seat, pondering whether anyone else found the Canadian anthem mishap offensive. Based on the cheering, Ryan knocked it out of the arena. The word international in U.S. context is a bit of a catchphrase reflecting how U.S. people, generally U.S. Whites, utilize frameworks of “international” to glorify conceptions of inclusivity and gain clout. Whiteness absorbs the term international to perpetuate postrace neoliberal ideals. My U.S. White, straight body nostalgically recentered this homonormative whiteness lie as I read “International Gay Rodeo Association” on my rodeo ticket and became impressed. This additional clout was fed by my heteronormative misbelief that the queer rodeo community would not be as substantial or as talented as the NRA (National Rodeo Association). The merit granted through “international” is not overlooked by the queer rodeo community as the international framings were constantly reiterated to me. White neoliberal logics of “international” function to communicatively project the allusion of diversity. I mistakenly believed that “international” meant that racial diversity from multiple nations would be present. However, as I stood for the national anthems, I learned that “international” representation in the IGRA means Canada, despite the large presence of Brown Latinx bodies quietly speaking Spanish among themselves throughout the stadium.

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The contradictory use of “international” to signify diversity while only representing those countries that mirror U.S. White heteronormative demographics denotes the continued dominance of U.S. White queer exceptionalism, or, as Puar (2007) defined it, homonationalism. Allow me to begin by denoting the homonationalism and U.S. queer exceptionalism demonstrated through the opening ceremonies. As we are asked to stand and remove cover, we collectively join in the homonationalism project of patriotism. The U.S. national anthem is played while rodeo participants and audience members alike remove our hats and place our hands over our hearts, embodying a complicated desire for acceptance into U.S. national patriotic power and also a defining of U.S. queer embodiments as embracing U.S. patriotism in all its homophobic, patriarchal, racist, and heteronormative glory. As I sit in the rodeo stadium filled with queers and queer allies, I am challenged by Eguchi’s (2014) critique of international implications to desire Western White cowboy masculinity. Outside of the flamboyant drag queens, the rainbow flags, and the “drag steer race” event, not much separates the IGRA rodeos from mainstream armature rodeos. The IGRA even opens with a prayer. As I closed my eyes and lowered my head, my body became a location betwixt desire for the queering of White cowboy culture and the jarring reality of assimilation into that very Christian and Western/cowboy partnering that justifies the violence against the LGBTQ community. Rather than resisting U.S. heteronormative politics through a counternational critique, the IGRA aligns with U.S. patriotism. In fact, it further extends U.S. queer politics into White homoexceptionalism by degrading the international presence through a blundering of the Canadian national anthem and a blatant disregard for the colonized nations also present. The only other nod to an international presence was given to an Australian woman competing in the steer wrestling. Before she made her U.S. rodeo debut, the rodeo announcer introduced her to the crowd with the heartwarming story of how, three years ago at this very rodeo, she saw the steer wrestling event and swore she would return someday to compete in it. He finishes by including us: “Let’s give a big United States welcome to Carla as she keeps her promise today in chute 6!” The crowd cheers as the chute opens and Carla struggles to hang on to the horns of the 400-pound steer. She stumbles, losing her footing, is dragged a bit, and eventually concedes to the steer by falling to the ground. Over the loudspeaker, the announcer encourages, “Well, folks, she came all the way from Australia to fulfill a promise, and she did!” We then were asked to celebrate her travel rather than her failure in the event. In typical White queer homonormative politics, Carla’s White masculine-female body is awarded success simply by her presence as an internationally recognized competitor. I clap, contemplating what it means for the United States, Canada, and now Australia to be the only nations noted as the international presence.

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The United States, Canada, and now Australia serving as the “international” framing for the IGRA is significant when we think in terms of imperialism, whiteness, and the historical ties to colonialism maintained by U.S. cowboy culture. Queer readings of this “international” framing also signify to queer intercultural scholars the degree of cultural power Western ideologies of sexuality have globally. Homonormativity is deeply embedded in Western power. Through a “global north” alignment, the United States, Canada, and Australia define queerness through the assimilation into the sexual ideologies of White queer Western liberalism. Along these lines, Canada, Australia, and the United States are considered settler colonial countries (Barker, Rollo, & Lowman, 2017; Veracini, 2010). Colonialism draws attention to the colonial realms of White settlers removing lands, rights, and cultural practices from indigenous people. More poignantly, settler colonial studies draw attention to the long-standing history of colonialism and erasure of indigenous cultural memory (Veracini, 2010). In reading more about the interconnectedness of these nation-states, I found that Canada, the United States, and Australia share the cultural practice of maintaining these settler colonial ideals through the ideological constructs of rodeos (Snyders, 2011), iconic framings of the White heteronormative “cowboy” (Alexander, 2008, 2014a, 2014b; Eguchi, 2014; Jafri, 2013; Filax, 2008; O’Connell, 2010), the “Wild West” histories (Alexander, 2008, 2012a, 2012b, 2014b; Jafri, 2013; Snyders, 2011; Barker, 2012), and historical “cowboy and Indian” ideals (Jafri, 2013; Stucky, 2015; Snyders, 2011; Pelias, 2012). The queer “international” cowboy extends homonationalism and homonormativity by defining what queer bodies constitute the gay cowboy (White—presumably Christian—U.S. masculine gay men). The IGRA queer international cowboy further demonstrates the Western dominance to frame global queer politics in relation to whiteness, northness, masculinity, Christianity, and heteronormativity. Not surprisingly, the international stage taken at the IGRA continues these settler colonialism ideologies of celebrating the White queer cowgirl colonizer simply for her presence and persistence to participate in rodeo traditions. As we clap for Carla, rodeo participants and audience members are asked to continue these White colonial practices by collectively redefining what queer bodies serve as queer cowboys and cowgirls. We celebrate the White queer colonizer cowgirl from Australia and further perpetuate White homonationalism. Carla’s White queer masculine cowgirl embodiments are celebrated because she aligns with the U.S. homonormative politics of White U.S. queer liberal politics. Carla plays a significant role here because she allows the IGRA to project a growing international presence, beyond Canada and now Australia, all the while assimilating properly into U.S. homonationalism embodiments of U.S. White queer cowgirl. This pressing value of Carla by the IGRA denotes the White U.S. national logic of valuing inclusiveness while not actually incor-

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porating difference. If one mannerism of whiteness is erasure to empower White bodies, then signifying diversity through a recentering of White colonial states is telling here. The White queer colonizer cowboy becomes the celebrated body, signifying “how nations not only produce but also sanction certain queer subjectivities over others” (Kee Tan, 2001, p. 170). Whiteness employs the framings of international through an illusion of inclusivity while ignoring the presence of many Brown colonized bodies at the IGRA rodeos. Thus, the queer Latinx and Black bodies that I see at the rodeo become erased by representing only White colonial states in their international contexts, enunciating that the White homonormative distortion of queer inclusivity in U.S. contexts is unquestionably White and exceptionally represented by the White queer colonial cowboy. Perhaps more telling is the absence of other queer bodies of color. The missing Asian and Middle Eastern bodies expose how homonormativity within the cowboy culture is exclusive to only certain bodies of color (Alexander, 2012a; Eguchi, 2014, 2019). The IGRA rodeo provides a queer space where rodeo participants and audience members participate in a White homonormative logic to believe we stand for international queer inclusivity, while in reality the U.S. White gay cowboy is the cultural exception. The exclusiveness of only White-settlercolonized countries serving to denote this “international” framing demonstrates how even in this marginalized space of the gay rodeos, we see the harmful workings of White homonationalism defining what bodies serve as queer cowboys and cowgirls. Furthermore, these same workings define what sexuality serves as “queer.” Queer intercultural communication scholars have demonstrated how queerness and sexuality become limited to the model dominated by White U.S. norms (e.g., Puar, 2006; Chávez, 2013; Eguchi, 2019). Arguably, the whitened U.S. imperialist presence at the IGRA further demonstrates how U.S. queer politics continue the erasure of queer bodies of color, the removal of sexual possibilities from non-U.S. contexts, and would expunge the aesthetic transgression of queer of color potentialities if colonized states were acknowledged at the gay rodeo. The inclusion of colonizer states also furthers the exceptionalism specific to U.S. White queer dominance. In the moment of Ryan’s national anthem singing, not only is he permitted to blunder the Canadian national anthem but we collectively encourage his effort to sing a “different” national anthem. Ryan’s complete disregard for learning the Canadian anthem and our collective acceptance of his effort normalizes the U.S. national anthem as the only nation deserving respect. Eguchi (2018) reminds me that homonationalism infiltrates these smaller LGBTQ communities through White male privilege. On this White “international” queer stage, Ryan asks us to cheer for U.S. homoexceptionalism. Silva (2016) notes, “Identity (raced and otherwise) has shifted to identification to maintain a form of social control that benefits those in power and maintains the paradoxical fiction that America is wel-

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coming to all but also discerning of who has the right to its exceptionalism” (p. 162). While we remain standing for the Canadian national anthem, our embrace of Ryan organizes racial, sexual, and gender formations of who really belongs within the IGRA. As he disregardingly reads/sings his way through the Canadian national anthem, the crowd’s support for him recenters U.S. homoexceptionalism. When Ryan curtsies and sashays back to the bucking chutes, racial, gender, nation-state, and sexual formations reconstruct the gay cowboy as White, cismale, able-bodied, and of U.S. nationality—reinforcing that the “real” gay cowboys of the West are not from Canada or any other nation-state but rather are U.S.-born-and-bred White gay cowboys. U.S. WHITE QUEER COLONIALISM The postrodeo potluck celebration is finally underway. The smell of baked beans and pulled pork fills the air, and my stomach flips in excitement. Walking back with a full plate of barbecue, I find a seat at a table with a mix of White women and Latinas. An elderly woman of color is visibly drunk. Her daughter rolls her eyes at her as she moves slightly to make room for me at the table. I ask what brought them to the rodeo today. The young Latina across from me starts in on her love for horses and how her wife brought her to celebrate her equine love. The conversation is mostly dominated by the White elderly CGRA founder cowgirl, Carol, who presumes that each of the younger women sitting with her want to learn the history of CGRA. Most of her stories lead to a common theme: “You should join the CGRA!” Her continual push for membership does not go unnoticed as the intoxicated mother questions, “What does it cost?” “Only thirty dollars. You know, these rodeos are entirely volunteer-ran. So all the proceeds go to charities.” Carol responds. Intrigued by her sales pitches, I finally bite. “Carol,” I ask, “are membership numbers a problem?” Carol repositions herself toward me and responds, “Well, you see, the CGRA was one of the first gay rodeo associations. We put together the gay rodeos here in Colorado to provide gay cowboys and lesbian cowgirls a safe place to meet other gay folks. It was a very important place for our community. Now with the growing trends of social media, the need for these social gatherings have dwindled, and so have the membership numbers. With the membership numbers so low, we had to find different avenues for putting on the rodeos.” “In fact,” Carol’s eyes widen and then become very narrow as she leans in toward me and speaks softly only to me, “one year we tried partnering with

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the Mexican rodeo. . . . That didn’t go over well at all. They didn’t like our presence there.” Carol’s eyes flicker to the women of color sitting among us. “I can imagine,” I reply. Carol, believing I am agreeing with her queer critique of the charrería, nods her head. Whiteness floods over us as my White body settles in this moment of ethnographic ambiguity. Looking back now, I do not believe I fully understood the racial disparagememt present, denoted best by my silence. Like Ryan’s national anthem moment, the failure of uniting the charrería with the IGRA organizes how U.S. homoexceptionalism functions through neocolonialism in these marginalized spaces. Taken together, each ethnographic moment points to how U.S. homonationalism presumes power through Whiteness, and the racism, sexism, and xenophobia it perpetuates is excused through the performatives of U.S. White gay homonormativity. I pause here to explain that I do not see White queer colonialism as separate from U.S. White homoexceptionalism. However, this section seeks to add to the conversational critiques of postcolonial studies as homophobic (Alexander, 2008) and queer theory as White (Alexander, 2008; Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Muñoz, 1999) by looking directly into the colonizing practices engaged by the IGRA. In today’s postcolonial era, queer intercultural scholars must remain cognizant of how whiteness functions through queer bodies in order to marginalize people of color while simultaneously erasing queer bodies of color. In this section I draw attention to U.S. White queer colonialism to (re)awaken a consciousness, specifically to White queer intercultural scholars, of how White queers and White queer allies perpetuate colonial practices that become vindicated through queerness. With that said, I took a critical interpretive queer reading (see Alexander, 2008) to the uniting of the IGRA with the charrería to locate the functions of whiteness and the resurgence of White queer supremacy through this U.S. White queer colonizing moment(s). Like dominant White U.S. rodeos, charrerías are rodeo shows that celebrate the historical traditions of Mexican ranching. From the traditional charro clothing of large sombreros and silver-studded trim, to the mariachi music and Spanish language, nothing about a charrería remotely resembles U.S. rodeos. In fact, none of the events are the same or judged similarly. Perhaps the most striking difference is that the charrerías award no prize money. Rather, the charrería is a celebration of cultural memory, a postcolonial practice to commemorate the trademark figure of the Mexican charro as a symbol of their national identity. To presume that the charrería community mirrors the U.S. capitalistic desire for membership numbers and rodeo attendance denotes Eurocentric entitlement of whiteness and U.S. homoexceptionalism.

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Certainly, the presence of the U.S. White flamboyant drag queen cowboy could be met with Mexican machismo disparagement. But Carol’s reading of the charrería community’s resistance to the CGRA presence as solely a queer critique overlooks the colonial history the Mexican rodeos are resisting. Carol’s retelling is a window into U.S. colonialism logic or the everpresent “mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath” (Gandhi, 1998, p. 4). White queer U.S. colonialism functions by focusing on the marginalization of sexual identity politics and thus denoting how “essentialist identity politics often reinforces hegemonic power structures rather than dismantling them” (Johnson & Henderson, 2005, p. 5). We learn two important tactics of White queer U.S. colonialism here. The first is how whiteness functions through queerness to project White queers as saviors to Other communities, in this case the Mexican rodeo community. It is a White essentialist presumption that merging these two rodeos also benefits the Mexican rodeo community. U.S. homoexceptionalism denotes the historical colonial logic that merging an indigenous space with their U.S. White queer presence is “good for all.” Furthermore, the misreading of the merger failure demonstrates the commonplace White supremacy tactic that when Whites are marginalized, we understand the hardships of people of color too. In this case, the gay rodeo cowgirls/cowboys should align with the Mexican rodeo associations because we both understand what it is like to be on the “rodeo margins.” Secondly, Carol demonstrates the perpetual U.S. White queer failure to acknowledge intersectionality. By only understanding the rodeo merger through the lens of sexuality, U.S. White queer colonialism continues to believe U.S. queers are further marginalized by the rejection from the charrería community. Eguchi and Washington (2016) remind us, “The intersectional politics of difference embedded in the material realities of queerness cannot be forgotten, ignored, and, essentialized by the normalcy and conflation of gayness as whiteness” (p. 420). The presumption that charrería cowboys and cowgirls loathe the presence of gay cowboys and cowgirls overlooks the intersectional complexity of the racialized threat of the White gay cowboy infiltrating Mexican rodeo space and whitening it. Finally, the homonormative assumption that the charrería community took issue with the gay presence also erases realities of Latinx relationships to queer politics. Carol’s misperception of the merging flop demonstrates how whiteness functions within queerness to erase intersectional acknowledgments of race and nationality within queer politics. Many queers of color challenge the whiteness of U.S. LGBTQ politics (Eguchi, 2015, 2018; Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Ross, 2005; Yep, 2013; Yep & Elia, 2012). These scholars point to how U.S. queer politics often removes the significance of their difference under the illusion that “our own unified difference has sustained us in the specified communities where we claim shelter and support” (Alexander, 2003, p. 350). Carol’s retelling of this moment should not be taken lightly

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because it powerfully demonstrates U.S. White queer imperialistic dominance. The merging of these two rodeo communities proves yet again U.S. White dominance to overtake an indigenous space and the justification through White queerness to do so. Furthermore, Carol’s recap of this event couched in the context of raising membership numbers alludes to which rodeo communities deserve preservation. These moments revitalize the long history of U.S. settler colonialism, in which the White queer cowboy/cowgirl stands in as the “new” celebrated cultural icon for our Wild West desires: a (re)turn to the hegemonic “Wild West” with a queer twist. DECOLONIZING THE WILD WEST WHITE QUEER COWBOY My eyes glance over the hanging rodeo plaques. At this rodeo there are few to no sponsor banners. Instead the signs that hang along the rodeo fence are the names of the different events. My eyes peruse them and abruptly stop on “Women’s Bareback Riding.” I fixate on it with excitement. I am elated to watch women ride in my favorite rodeo event. I quickly flip open the program to see when it goes. I am surprised to learn that no men’s saddle bronc or bareback events filled. The only rough stock riding taking place today will be a cowgirl. I am filled with feminist pride. The rodeo becomes, for me, an anticipation to meet Daniella. The bucking horses are loaded into the chutes. The announcer begins, “Well, some of you know her from her movie debut, some of you know her for riding bulls. Today, we get the pleasure of watching Daniella Banks saddle bronc.” As he’s talking, I find Daniella in her masked helmet and plaid long-sleeve pearl-snap shirt covered by her protective vest. She lifts her leg over the chute. Her dark brown leather chaps carefully settle onto the horse. Cowboys hang over the chute helping adjust her saddle, buck strap, and buck rein. The horse slams into the chute. Daniella is pulled off, and the whole preparation process is restarted. The announcer fills the time by explaining the event, and how it is judged, to the crowd. I am entranced by Daniella. I can almost hear the cowboys pumping her up. She leans back and yells, “OK, boys!” as she nods her head. The gate swings open. For a moment the air is still . . . Suddenly the horse bursts from the chute, throwing her head between her knees and bucking. I’m riding with Daniella, leaning my chest back and tucking my chin. Holding my breath. I finally shout, “Hang on!” The mare slams her front hooves on the ground, twisting as she thrusts her hind legs into the air. The time rolling is just past five seconds. Daniella is thrown over the shoulder of the horse. As her body hits the ground, the mare’s hind leg comes down on Daniella’s hip. She curls up in pain. Silence.

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The pickup horse shuttles the bucking horse out of the area. Daniella rolls onto her hands and knees. Slowly, she pulls herself to a standing position. The crowd watches in amazement. “Well, folks, Daniella was just under the six seconds goal, so no check today. But it looks like she’s going to be all right!” We cheer as Daniella removes her helmet and waves to the crowd. I am always drawn to people who disrupt cultural spaces. Cultural disruption inspires me. Since my body is such a projection of White heteronormativity, I long for hegemonic disruption. From the minute I saw her mounting her bucking horse to the time she limped to the stands in her fluorescent pink tank that read, “Yup Still Gay,” Daniella inspired me. Daniella embodied a queer of color interruption in this White neocolonial, homoexceptionalist space. I had to get to know her. I longed to understand who she was for this community, and more so, what the community meant to her. After hours of chatting and one long, unstructured interview, Daniella, or “Dannie,” as her friends call her, taught me the possibilities provided by queer spaces, despite their White homonormative projections. She did so through her quare aesthetics that negotiate and challenge White homonormativity. Quare theory here is essential because it foregrounds race and class encompassed by Dannie’s queer critique. Or as Johnson (2005) explains, “Quare” offers a way to critique stable notions of identity and, at the same time, to locate racialized and class knowledge. . . . As a disciplinary expansion, then, I wish to “quare” “queer” such that ways of knowing are viewed both as discursively mediated and as historically situated and materially conditioned. This reconceptualization foregrounds the ways in which lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and transgendered people of color come to sexual and racial knowledge. (p. 3)

I quote Johnson at length here because his explanations of quare theory help me situate the embodiments of Dannie within and through the IGRA. Dannie’s Black raciality, gendering challenges, and class realities are quare temporalities in the IGRA. These intersections of her identity are the very vantagepoints that challenge White, queer U.S. homonormativity. Or in other words, Dannie as a Black, lesbian cowboy who covers her entry fees only by her previous winnings “jettisons [the IGRA’s] homogenizing tendencies” (p. 3). Her quare aesthetics are foregrounded here to read who she is for the IGRA community and the cultural challenges she empowers for the gay rodeo community. Allow me to begin here with how Dannie’s performance of quare Black cowboy serves as a transgression from U.S. White lesbianism. Puar (2001) articulates that U.S. lesbianism is a solely U.S. “authentic” derivative defined by the White, masculine, butch lesbian body. Puar further claims, “Here lesbianism and masculinity as whiteness converge at the site of a nation to produce and privilege certain narratives of desire over others” (p. 169). First,

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Dannie challenges the cowboy/cowgirl binary by identifying as both feminine and masculine. In our interview, she noted to me the cisgender politics of gendered pronouns in a complex narrative poetic. Dannie told me of how she used to go by “they” but decided she preferred the feminine pronoun because she identified as a woman who can also be a badass cowboy. She said, “I’m not a cowgirl. I’m a cowboy that’s a woman” (personal interview, August 29, 2018). The complexity of Dannie’s trans politics here is beyond the scope of this piece but serves to expose how her performatives challenge the cowboy/cowgirl binary perpetuated by the gay rodeo that only men or masculine-identified bodies can be “badass cowboys.” Her feminine performative of cowboy gestures to a thinking beyond the White U.S. lesbian binary of butch lesbian or lipstick lesbian. Concurrently, Dannie unsettles the settler/native construct in this White queer colonizing space. Alexander (2012a) writes of his own desires to be a cowboy and the complex erasure of the Black cowboy even in the cultural memorial spaces that mark Othered cowboys. The Black cowboy, while more present in U.S. history than Asian or Middle Eastern bodies are, is actively erased from the cultural memory and present realities of U.S. cowboy culture. Alexander intuitively notes, “Desire is a funny thing because it is often linked to colonialism” (p. 228). Dannie’s rooted desires to be a cowboy and her joy at being acknowledged as a cowboy align with this same complexity of colonialism. Dannie’s cowboy desire is certainly rooted in colonialism; however, her success within the IGRA, especially in such glorified events as rough stock events, requires the acknowledged presence of quare bodies. Dannie’s Black quare embodiments simultaneously challenge the U.S. White queer colonizing politics of the IGRA. Dannie identifies as a Black gay cowboy. She understands the racist groundings in rodeo that continue to remove the presence of people of color and the covert racism displayed through the IGRA. For example, she told many stories of being mistaken for the only other Black cowgirl in the IGRA by different White IGRA members. However, her success in the highly respected rough stock events is unmistakable and widely recognized among the IGRA community. Furthermore, her notoriety nestled in her Black quare cowboy aesthetics does not absorb Dannie into White homonormativity. Rather, her quare of color aesthetics compounded by her overall rodeo success jolts the queer neocolonial history appropriated through U.S. White rodeos. Her participation, success, and notoriety force a quare consciousness. Finally, as Dannie explained, there remains a tension between traditional lipstick lesbians and butch lesbians. She also explained that many lesbians partner in heteronormative ways (e.g., feminine-presenting lesbians with masculine-presenting lesbians). This U.S. lesbianism norm is prevalent within the IGRA and is another queer cultural ideology that Dannie disrupts. Her

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Black, feminine-identified, masculine-presenting body and quare embodiments challenge White, lesbian homonormative practices. She has explained that she is masculine-presenting, and this typically is matched with more feminine-presenting lesbians, but she desires masculine-presenting women and also enjoys “poking” sex with gay men. From her sexual domination over White gay cowboys, through their sexual engagements in poking, to her interracial polyamorous relationship with her White, queer, butch lesbian partner, Dannie’s sexuality also challenges U.S. homonormativity. Dannie’s quare aesthetics are noticed in the White homonormative IGRA. Furthermore, she acknowledges that her quare embodiments are disruptions. She notes the difficulty she continues to have with White, older butch lesbians. I noticed this tension as well. At another rodeo event, Carol walked up to me and said, “So, I see you’ve met Daniella. . . .” Carol’s voice trailed off in a suggestive manner, begging a White homonormative response from me. Here Carol rhetorically provides a Whiteness window for me to claim my allegiance to White queer lesbianism, a Whiteness strategy used often by White women to be exclusively racist while seeming polite (McIntosh, 2017; DiAngelo, 2011). The tensions experienced by Daniella and witnessed by me expose the resistive nature her Black quare body signifies to the interpellation of U.S. White lesbianism. Her sexual acts, sexuality, and masculinepresenting Black cowgirl performatives are “perceived in opposition to the normativity of whiteness” (Arrizón, 2006, p. 155). Like Arrizón (2006) and Calafell (2015) have suggested, queer feminists of color “disidentify with a dominant Anglo/Eurocentric system of representation” through alternative performatives of sexuality (Arrizón, 2006, pp. 159–160). In doing so, such non-White embodied performatives racialize sexuality in manners counter to U.S. homonormative logics. Daniella’s participation in the IGRA nudges a thinking of Otherwise, all the while usurping the center by providing a racialized sexual performance unbound by U.S. White, lesbian homonormative constraints. These quare disidentifications are huge emotional and physical endeavors embodied by strong queers of color (Muñoz, 1999). Dannie’s transgressive quare of color aesthetics awaken the white(ned) queers in the IGRA and furthermore challenge homonormative spaces (Eguchi, Files-Thompson, & Calafell, 2018, p. 188). Notably, Dannie emphasized to me that these disruptions are only made possible through safe queer places for her queer of color expressions. I would be remiss if I did not note the value of the IGRA to Daniella. It was not until I interviewed Dannie that I really understood that, despite its whiteness and homonormative nature, these queer spaces serve an imperative role for queers of color too. This role is best captured by Dannie’s telling of her first experience at a gay rodeo, an event that took over ten years to come to fruition. She says,

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It was really funny meeting Wilma and going to the Gay Rodeo in the first place. Because I went by myself, I had no idea what to expect. I mean, there is this whole thing about cowboy culture and yeah, they are gay, and so am I. . . . But still, I am also a person of color. SO there’s this aspect of, What is going to happen? Are people going to be inviting and accepting? And then I meet the president, Wilma. He’s this hard-working cowboy, drinking his whiskey at the bar with his big hat on. And so I walk up and he turns to me and reaches his huge hand out to me and says, “Well, hi!” [said in a high-pitched effeminate voice]. So I was a bit surprised to not encounter judgments on how I looked, how I presented. I felt, pretty comfortable. (personal communication, August 29, 2018) From her childhood, Dannie always wanted to be a cowboy. But it was not until she learned about gay rodeos in her early twenties that this reality seemed possible. She understood the “whole thing about cowboy culture” being a U.S. colonizing White, heteronormative, patriarchal space that could not only marginalize her Black quare body but physically harm her. However, in meeting Wilma, a White queer cowboy of great power in the organization, Dannie denotes the potentiality of queerness Muñoz (2009) alludes to as “an insistence on something else, something better, something dawning” (p. 189). The gay rodeo opened a door to a dream Dannie never thought possible. Furthermore, without the IGRA, the potentialities of Dannie’s queer virtuosity embodied by her performatives of Black cowboy could never become realized. It is through her bravery as the quare cowboy that Daniella provides a queer of color aesthetic and hearkens a consciousness of and challenge to White homonormativity. Taken together, this space and Daniella become a queer utopian disruption to White U.S. queer colonialism. Dannie further explained there is a difference in the culture of the gay rodeos as opposed to other amateur rodeos, including the cowboy of color

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rodeos. She states, “The gay rodeo is more like, ‘We are all in this together; we are going to help each other.’ But when it’s gay, there’s drama. It’s gonna happen” (personal communication, August 29, 2018). Dannie articulates the queer ideals of acceptance and supportiveness encompassed at the IGRA and attests to the fact that these ideals are not present in other marginalized rodeo communities. However, these same liberal norms are the cultural heart of White U.S. homonormativity. Dannie’s relationship with the IGRA demonstrates the current cultural pulse of queer intercultural communication that demands more research. She embodies disidentifactory practices that are necessitated by White homonormativity within the IGRA but also denotes the possibilities provided by these same disidentifactory embodiments to empower the marginalized. Dannie adds that her generation is “on the cusp, or at least gay culture is at the cusp, of becoming mainstream” (personal communication, August 29, 2018). Here Daniella nods to the infiltration of homonormativity within the IGRA, and how homonormativity has become reflected by a very different heterosexual crowd infiltrating the gay rodeos. Calafell (2009) speaks of the harmful contamination of heterosexual presence in LGBTQ spaces. She clarifies that often heterosexuals make queer spaces “inhospitable and in some ways uninhabitable with their performances of privilege, disrupting a queer centered affect, throwing a lack of rights and privileges in everyone’s faces” (p. 7). Dannie echoes Calafell when she tells me of how this gay-mainstream shift disregards the importance the gay rodeos have played in years past, where gay cowboys and cowgirls centered their secret lives around these rodeos. The infiltration of heterosexuals into this queer space dilutes the queer rodeo community. While all in the IGRA embrace the “membership numbers” and rodeo attendance of heterosexuals, these White heteronormative liberal ideals shatter the queer sanctity the IGRA once provided for queer cowboys and cowgirls. Dannie teaches us here the tensive balance between the harms of homonormativity and the possibilities homonormativity provides. Allow me to clarify: these same queer philosophies of acceptance and support have branched into mainstream heteronormative White liberal culture, creating U.S. White homonormativity/homonationalism and thus manifesting White queer elitism. However, it is these same homonormative ideals that allow queer of color cowboys and cowgirls the possibility to disrupt U.S. White queer politics. REFLECTING ON RODEO RIDES With the history of cowboy culture so exclusively White and excessively heterosexual, I was shocked to learn of the gay rodeo circuit and excited to see what lessons on queering this equestrian world would teach me. The

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lessons I came to learn were more a challenge to the queer community, to become more cautiously aware of how queer bodies all too often slip comfortably into U.S. White homonormative performances, thereby securing whiteness, cissexism, heteronormativity, xenophobia, and patriarchy. The exceptionalism of U.S. White queer dominance present in the moment of Ryan’s national anthem singing and the failed uniting of the IGRA with the charrería demonstrate how queer colonialism functions through the homonormative lie that all marginalization is experienced in the same way, absolving whiteness from queerness. Furthermore, the national anthem moment couched in the failure to unite with the charrería demonstrates that no matter the international presence, U.S. homonationalism presumes power through Whiteness and remains excused through the performatives of U.S. White gay homonormativity. The IGRA teaches us that U.S. White exceptionalism pulsates through the queer rodeo community, cautiously reminding us that White entitlement may come dressed in drag but is still perpetuated by White queer bodies. I tread carefully here as a hetero-White cisgender woman. In learning of gay rodeos, I became excited to join the space, believing I would finally walk through a rodeo and not drown in patriarchy and racism. Yet I was not even to my seat when I overheard a White woman yell across the beer garden, “Mike, I didn’t even recognize you; I thought you were a colored!” As the words met my ears, I was quickly reminded how my straightness and whiteness fooled me into the White heteronormative lie that queer spaces are removed from racism, sexism, transphobia, and cissexism. I write this chapter as a telling example of homonormativity, admitting how my own whiteness and heteronormativity shape the IGRA community as well. I was yet another straight person infiltrating a sacred queer space and normalizing it. This chapter identifies the importance for queer intercultural communication research to challenge the homogenizing White reality of queer theory, articulate the embodiments of White homonormativity and their cultural consequences, and locate the descending voices of queer bodies of color and theoretically value these standpoints. I close with the queer possibilities Daniella offers. Through her nonconforming Black quare cowboy embodiments, Daniella reminds scholars and activists that we must be vigilant to point out the harms of homonormativity and whiteness. However, as Muñoz (2009) stressed, queer failure is also the door for its potentialities (pp.167–183). Indeed, Dannie reminds us to never overlook the transgressions presented by queers of color, who also manifest queer futurities made possible by infiltrating these White homonormative spaces and challenging neohomonormative ideologies.

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It’s the ropes and the reins, the joy and the pain, And they call the thing rodeo. —Garth Brooks

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. How does whiteness function through queer exceptionalism? 2. How is queer colonialism an example of homonormativity? 3. What are other examples of queer of color transgressions that disrupt homonormativity? KEY WORDS • • • • •

White Homonormativity Exceptionalism Colonialism Rodeo Critical Performance Ethnography NOTE 1. For more on reflexivity, see Madison, 2011; McIntosh & Hobson, 2013.

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Jafri, B. (2013). Desire, settler colonialism, and the racialized cowboy. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 37(2), 73–86. Johnson, E. P. (2005). “Quare” studies or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. In E. P. Johnson & M. G. Henderson (Eds.), Black queer studies: A critical anthology (pp. 124–160). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Johnson, E. P., & Henderson, M. G. (2005). Introduction: Queering Black studies/“quaring” queer studies. In E. P. Johnson & M. G. Henderson (Eds.), Black queer studies: A critical anthology (pp. 3–17). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Johnson, J. R. (2013). Cisgender privilege, intersectionality, and the criminalization of CeCe McDonald: Why intercultural communication needs transgender studies. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 135–144. Kee Tan, C. (2001). Transcending sexual nationalism and colonialism. In J. C. Hawley (Ed.), Post-colonial queer (pp. 123–138). Albany: State University of New York Press. Kennedy, T. M. (2014). Sustaining White homonormativity: The kids are all right as public pedagogy. Journal of lesbian studies, 18(2), 118–132. Lee, W. (2003). Kauering queer theory: My autocritography and a race-conscious, womanist, transnational turn. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas, & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 147–170). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Livadary, M. (2014). Queens and rodeos: A straight year on the gay rodeo. New York: Filmakers Library. Madison, D. S. (2008). Narrative poetics and performative interventions. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 391–405). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Madison, D. S. (2011). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McIntosh, D. M. D. (2014). White feelings, feeling straight: Cultivating affective attentiveness for queer futurities. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1(3), 154–158. https://doi. org/10.14321/qed.1.3.0154 McIntosh, D. M. D. (2017). Victims, protectors, and possibilities for change: White womanhood and the violence of heteronormativity. QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, 4(2), 162–169. McIntosh, D. M. D. (2018). Removing racism from White bodies: Monstrous White men marching with torches. The Popular Culture Studies Journal, 6(2), 118–144. McIntosh, D. M. D., & Hobson, K. (2013). Reflexive engagement: A White (queer) woman’s performance of failures and alliance possibilities. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 9(4), 1–23. McIntosh, D. M. D., Moon, D. G., & Nakayama, T. K. (2019). Interrogating the communicative power of whiteness. New York: Routledge. Moon, D. G. (2016). “Be/coming” White and the myth of White ignorance: Identity projects in White communities. Western Journal of Communication, 80(3), 282–303. https://doi.org/10. 1080/10570314.2016.1143562 Moreman, S. T., & McIntosh, D. M. D. (2010). Brown scriptings and rescriptings: A critical performance ethnography of Latina drag queens. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7(2), 115–135. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics (vol. 2). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Nakayama, T. K., & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 81, 291–309. O’Connell, A. (2010). An exploration of redneck whiteness in multicultural Canada. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 17(4), 536–563. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/sp/jxq019 Pelias, R. J. (2012). On playing cowboys and Indians: Early lessons in ethical sense making. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 12(6), 479–481.

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Puar, J. K. (2001). Transnational configurations of desire: The nation and its White closets. In B. B. Rashussen, E. Klinenberg, I. J. Nexica, & M. Wray (Eds.), The making and unmaking of whiteness (pp. 167–183). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Puar, J. K. (2006). Mapping U.S. homonormativities. Gender, place and culture, 13, 67–88. Puar, J. K. (2007). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ross, M. B. (2005). Beyond the closet: A raceless paradigm. In E. P. Johnson & M. G. Henderson (Eds.), Black queer studies: A critical anthology (pp. 161–189). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Santos, A. C. (2013). Are we there yet? Queer sexual encounters, legal recognition and homonormativity. Journal of Gender Studies, 22(1), 54–64. Silva, K. (2016). Brown threat: Identification in the security state. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Snyders, H. (2011). “An Americanised issue with no place in South Africa?” Rodeo sports, muscular and cultural identity and animal rights in urban South Africa. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 28(15), 2130–2141. Stucky, N. (2015). Cap pistols and rubber tomahawks: Learning the ways of cowboys and Indians. International Review of Qualitative Research, 8(3), 301–309. Tomaselli, K. G., Dyll, L., & Francis, M. (2008). “Self” and “other”: Auto-Reflexive and indigenous ethnography. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 347–372). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Veracini, L. (2010). Settler colonialism. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Ward, J. (2008). White normativity: The cultural dimensions of whiteness in a racially diverse LGBT organization. Sociological Perspectives, 51(3), 563–586. https://doi.org/doi:10.1525/ sop.2008.51.3.563 Warren, J. T. (2003). Performing purity: Whiteness, pedagogy, and the reconstitution of power. New York: Peter Lang. Yep, G. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 118–126. Yep, G. A., & Elia, J. P. (2012). Racialized masculinities and the new homonormativity in Logo’s Noah’s Arc. Journal of Homosexuality, 59(7), 890–911.

Chapter Seven

Intercultural Queer Slippages and Translations Ahmet Atay

There are always linguistic and cultural slippages in intercultural queer, nonnormative, and fluid sexualities, translations where sexual minorities discover new meanings between their cultural locations, sexualities, and experiences in the peripheries of the society. By queer, I mean a counternormative sexual identity and space. By slippage, I mean experiences and meanings that cannot be translated and some kinds of cultural and linguistic in-betweenness are experienced. These hybrid, sense-making processes are political; hence, they are infused with a colonial past, the linguistic domination of English, nationality and citizenship, queer oppressions, and diasporic conservatisms, and finally, with queer sensibilities, desires, and insecurities. These translations are also digital, enabling international and intercultural individuals to utilize cyberspace to connect, build communities, find sexual pleasure, meet lifetime partners, and resist and perform queer activism. In this chapter, I focus on these international queer slippages and translations. As a queer Turkish-Cypriot subject, I came to understand and embody my own sexuality within the mainstream, White, U.S.-American queer culture. I translated, moving from one language to another to make sense of my sexual desire. I tried to pair my feelings and experiences with the right words, the ones I had brought with me across the continents and the ones I had picked up along the way. “Queer” meant nothing to me until I was exposed to queer theory. Queer simply does not have a direct translation. While my body’s queerness gravitated toward the word “queer,” and my body wanted to personify it, even with the cultural meanings that it stood for—regardless of the word’s political, historical, and cultural complexities—“queer” as a word did not mirror my own experiences, fears, sense of belonging, or sense of loss. 141

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Queerness as a state of being and comprising ways of knowing and performing is more than my sexuality. It is space, ways of being, and epistemology. When I turned to intercultural communication (IC) scholarship to look for theories and stories about international, diasporic, and immigrant articulations of queer lives, I realized the limitations of intercultural communication’s scope and the whiteness of queer discourse. Most of the scholars working on queer studies were White U.S. Americans. As an international queer translator who occupies in-between spaces and places within queer international and intercultural slippages, I began to write stories about my experiences in order to theorize and make sense of this patched-together, queer collage that I refer to as my identity. In this chapter, I focus on the ways in which I construct and perform queer, international, diasporic, cosmopolitan, and immigrant experiences and slippages. Therefore, my goal is to illuminate between intercultural communication research and diasporic queer experiences. I also explain some of the “dangers” of queer IC research. Moreover, in this chapter, my goal is to situate myself within (queer) critical intercultural communication (CIC) and negotiate my belonging within the discourse of queer turn in CIC research. In queer translations and slippages, I continuously try to understand globalized queerness within the queer cultures of home and of away-home. Half of my digitalized intercultural experiences create more slippages. They are partly digital, partly cultural, and partly linguistic. This autoethnographic piece is situated in queer intercultural communication scholarship. Hence, my goal is to present another (queer) pathway by offering my accented queer story. This story is personal and it is patched together, having multiple parts. I use critical autoethnography to help me share my story. Hence, I blend my observations with personal narratives. However, my hope is that my story will resonate with or inspire other queer, diasporic, or accented scholars. I see critical autoethnography as the most suitable methodology to help me share my story with a critical eye and self-reflexivity and to allow me to illuminate the link between cultural and personal by also being mindful of self-reflexivity. With some exceptions, such as in the writings of Yep (1998), Calafell (2007), Chávez (2009, 2013), Atay (2015), Eguchi (2015), Eguchi and Asante (2016), and Atay (2018a), intercultural communication scholarship has widely ignored the incorporation of queer experiences and voices in its discourse. Although CIC discourse has interrogated the cultural and social power structures that regulate, police, and oppress “othered” bodies, as well as theorized cultural identity formations and studied intersecting identity markers in local and local national contexts, it has often failed to engage with queer bodies and theorization. Chávez (2009) and Yep (2013) called attention to the lack of queer visibility in IC research and argued that IC researchers focus on difference and “othered” bodies while hardly including queer-

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ness or queer bodies. Along with several others, including Eguchi and Asante (2016), I joined Chávez (2009) and Yep (2013) in calling for the inclusion of queer lives, experiences, and voices in IC scholarship and a further focus on the intersections of race, gender, class, nationality, and queer sexualities. In her well-validated criticism, Chávez (2013) calls attention to the absence of queer voices and scholarship in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. She writes, Halualani, Mendoza, and Drzeweicka’s review of the development of critical intercultural communication scholarship also neglects mention of queer or trans approaches or the salience of transgender or sexuality to the development of this scholarship. The intersections and interplays between the queer and the intercultural thus need to be more explicitly explicated, elucidated, and elaborated. (p. 84)

Along with her call for the inclusion of queer studies and with Yep’s (2013) arguments for the need for intersectionality in intercultural communication, queer IC scholars, such as myself, have created a contemporary push to simultaneously queer and decolonize intercultural communication. We aim to decenter mainstream, U.S.-centric ways of knowing by opening up spaces to challenge or criticize traditional IC research as well as queer studies, which often take a very White and U.S.-centric approach to defining sexualities. This chapter attempts to embody these forces. Through an autoethnographic lens (Holman Jones, 2010, 2016; Alexander, 2014), I articulate transnational queer slippages and translations. To be more specific, I offer four distinct but interrelated contexts or vignettes: academic queer homes; the notion of geolocation in queer intercultural communication; critical/cultural methodologies, particularly the autoethnography to flesh out queer IC storytelling; and finally, digital aspects of queer intercultural communication. Through these interconnected vignettes, my goal is to present a collage, a queer intercultural story, and also to illuminate different theoretical, methodological, and contextual elements or aspects in queer intercultural communication. ACADEMIC QUEER HOMES Like so many others, I came to U.S. academia, 21 years ago, because I was curious about social and cultural issues and wanted to unpack and interrogate the complexities of identity formation in the context of globalization. As a media and cultural studies scholar, I came to the intercultural communication subfield to find a home. Quickly, I realized that belonging to multiple academic associations was not easy or desirable since the rigid boundaries of communication subdisciplines aim to box in our ideas, voices, bodies, iden-

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tities, and scholarship. I became a critical-cultural communications scholar whose research overlaps and intersects with cultural studies, media studies, critical intercultural communication, and postcolonial and queer studies. I was not easy to academically categorize or package up. Like my body, my ideas, and my sexuality, my CV is also complicated, multilayered, and unconventional. My research is transnational, intersectional, interdisciplinary, and queer. I often study people in the margins, and I live between nations and continents. I write about peripheries, queer intercultural experiences and lives, and nonnormative and “othered” queers. My voice and research have been very unconventional regarding the discourse of traditional intercultural communication. While I have been pushing the boundaries of CIC research along with Calafell (2007), Eguchi (2015), Griffin (2015), and Toyosaki and Chuang (2018), I have also been moving between critical discourses outside of critical intercultural communication. Academic home is in this slippage, similar to borderland. As a transnational, immigrant, and critical-cultural queer scholar, I gravitated toward studying transnational identity constructions, performances, and representations; questioned the global power structures; and aimed for developing and using decolonizing theoretical and methodological approaches, lenses, and interdisciplinary discourses. I wanted to examine transnational queer lives, immigrant experiences, diasporic cultures, homes and homelessness, and patched-together cultural identities. The discourse of queer interculturality and the idea of home captivated me. Like a naïve butterfly chasing after a light, I was chasing after an academic home. Light is deadly for butterflies. An accented queer voice in critical intercultural communication research meant constantly pushing academic boundaries to carve out academic homes to speak from. According to Manalansan (2006), a queer anthropologist and global queer theorist, recent works on sexuality and migration, particularly those that document queer sexualities, have not only emphasized the viability and importance of sexuality as an object of study but also have pointed to its constitutive role in the formation and definitions of citizenship and nation (p. 224). His academic reality did not match mine. I was a young researcher whose research was continually questioned by institutional power structures. Queer IC research requires queer mentoring, particularly when the new junior faculty member is an international scholar. As a graduate student, I was warned that queer IC work would be risky. I was told by White and heterosexual faculty members to prepare for rejection from mainstream journals and scholars, but I was nonetheless determined to carry out research in the topics I was passionate about. After a couple of rejections, I learned that heartache would be a part of my queer intercultural scholarship. It is not a secret that queer scholarship often does not receive recognition, and the work on diaspora and queer experiences is not exempt from judgment. In their work, Jones and Calafell (2012) highlight the importance of

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allyship in the lives of racial/ethnic minority and queer scholars. Furthermore, Calafell and Gutierrez-Perez (2018) call attention to the importance of queer mentoring in the process of making academia a home. As they articulate the importance of critical love and mentoring in the lives of Black, Brown, and queer bodies, they also remind us that hurt—the academic kind—is also part of queer faculty and faculty of color. Through their dream, I find the glimmer of hope for my intercultural queer scholarship: “We dream of a space where all of our identities are honored. All of these dreams are undergirded by a desire for performances of love in the academy” (p. 60). Queer intercultural communication is more than a research agenda; it is the reflection and sense-making process of my own lived experiences as a diasporic transnational queer scholar. Like other members of diasporic communities, I, too, left my home country, living in-between experiences, belonging to multiple locations. While I story my intercultural queer experiences, I theorize about the globalization processes that turned human bodies into sites of struggle and oppression. My body is privileged to be housed in the academy. Within these privileges, I have experienced academic hurt and oppression. I theorize from the academic sidelines. My accepted queer voice articulates new critical and cultural pathways to rethink and retheorize the pillars of IC research, particularly in critical intercultural communication, that both promises change but also polices the voices within. I theorize my experiences in the form of stories; hence, I embody decolonizing autoethnographic writing. Each story below contains something of the first vignette to reinforce their interconnectedness: Each is about finding queer homes. Some of them are geolocation-based; some are ideological, theoretical, and methodological; and some are purely digital. Each story is about queer intercultural communication theorizing, and each aims to capture the complicated facets of everyday queer intercultural communication and research. Collectively, the stories below read as a collage, as patched-together vignettes, and they highlight partly digital, partly cultural, and partly linguistic queer slippages. GEOLOCATION-BASED QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Our identities are constructed and performed (e.g., Butler, 1990; Yep, 1998). They are also translated and contextual. As an identity construct, a marker, and a performance, the definitions of queerness are contextually bound. The ways in which it is embodied, performed, and depicted are informed and shaped by social and cultural forces. Hence, our queer identities are found in dialogue with people, cultural forces, traditions, laws and regulations, and images around us. We cultivate a sense of queer self and perform a queer

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identity crafted by the mainstream queer cultural example or shaped in opposition to those ideals as reactions or acts of decolonization of mainstream queer discourses. It is not accidental that, like the other dimensions of the mainstream and commercialized U.S. culture, the mainstream U.S.-based queer culture also dominates the ways in which queerness is transnationally constructed, performed, and represented. I learned about queerness and its performances by watching the images of the mainstream U.S. queer culture in media and in everyday encounters. While my non-U.S.-American body was learning its queer ideals and politics, I was trying to embody and perform White, middle-class, body-conscious queerness. I was also reading research in these areas that was informing my understanding of U.S. queer politics and discourse. As Manalansan (2006) reminds us, the discourse of sexuality in migration studies is informed by several interrelated social forces that took hold during the 1980s and 1990s. He writes, The study of sexuality in migration emerged in the past ten to fifteen years due to numerous intellectual, political, and historical conditions, specifically the rise of the AIDS pandemic and the emergence of intellectual currents in feminism, race/ethnic studies, and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) studies. (p. 226)

At the time, my understanding of queerness was shaped by these cultural and academic discussions and cultural representations. I am a translator. I spent years translating the notion of queerness despite firmly knowing that its meanings and performances are contextual and culturally bound. I was trying to make sense of my own body, desires, and queerness in relation to other bodies that have certain privileges and sometimes certain disadvantages. My understanding of queerness is a dialogue between mainstream U.S.-American queer culture, research on queer studies, and the lack of queer definitions, experiences, and representations in my home culture. As I translated, the meanings blurred, and sometimes I got lost in translation. I found meanings in the slippages. Through these queer intercultural translations, I was trying to make sense of my own accented, diasporic, transnational, cosmopolitan, highly educated queer self. Then I realized that my voice, along with other diasporic and immigrant voices, was missing from mainstream U.S. queer culture as well as from queer academic discourse. Similar voices and discourses were also shut out of intercultural communication discussions. Manalansan’s (2006) articulations of the issue helped me navigate queerness in intercultural communication discourse as well as in mainstream U.S. queer culture. He writes, Not only were academics and health researchers acknowledging the bias in the usage of such terms as “gay,” “lesbian,” and/or “homosexual,” they were also

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trying to understand how migration can be an important factor in the creation of a variety of sexual identity categories and practices that do not depend on Western conceptions of selfhood and community. (p. 229)

I was among the queer, trying to articulate new ways of queer thinking and being, as I reflected on my own situated diasporic queer immigrant and international student/scholar realities. I came to the United States, like many other international students, to receive a graduate degree in media and critical-cultural studies. As my MA advisor suggested at the time, I enrolled in the 400-level course Gay and Lesbian Politics, in the political science department. The course was open to both undergraduate and graduate students, and I was one of two graduate students and the only international student in the class. I felt out of place, out of context. I did not know much about 1960s or 1980s U.S. politics, let alone queer politics. I had no reference points, culturally or emotionally. I felt detached but at the same time attached to the course material. We talked about key historical, political, and cultural figures, such as Oscar Wilde and Harvey Milk. I do not remember reading any international queer scholars even though we read a bit about the politically charged relationships between the LGBTQ movements and the role of racial minorities. I was oriented to U.S. queer politics. During the term, I befriended two gay men who later revealed that they were a couple and lived in my dorm, which had been opened for juniors and seniors and graduate students as well as exchange students. As they introduced me to other White middle- and upper-class queer men and women, my understanding of the queer culture became limited to the mainstream U.S.-American college town queer culture. White middle-class realities dominated my sense making. As I lived comfortably in the closet, away from the cultural and diverse realities of queer culture, I began forming my own sexual identity. I translated my desires into English words, but they felt hollow. I was trying to mirror the words in my own culturally fused world, and the translations did not make sense. I could not find meaning in words such as queer or gay. While my linguistic translations failed me, my cultural translations of queerness felt like cultural suffocation. I saw possibilities in slippages that opened up in each translation. The lack of a diasporic and immigrant queer context and a cultural exposure to the differences in queerness as well as the lack of a cultural and linguistic background resulted in possibilities for living in the slippages. I was the only queer I knew from my own culture, and I was the only international and immigrant queer in the culture that surrounded me. I sat in the closet. Only briefly did I ever leave the door ajar, letting some light come in. I moved from one Midwestern college town to another and yet another with suitcases full of clothes and boxes full of books. I also carried the closet with me. Never really fully opening the doors of the closet, I continued to

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take classes in gender and sexuality and read queer research in media, cultural studies, literature, queer studies, and education. I never came across any queer intercultural research. I failed to translate my academic curiosities into the subfield where I had relocated. Intercultural communication’s discourse failed to harbor my queer cultural and mediated academic pathways. I am a queer scholar, after all. After completing several courses in ethnography, autoethnography, philosophy of communication, performance studies, and finally, intercultural communication, I decided the only way to answer the questions I was asking was to make critical-cultural studies, media studies, and postcolonial queer studies my home. I began to queer the IC subfield regardless of the pushback. The only thing I needed was to find appropriate theoretical and methodological approaches. QUEER SLIPPAGES I came to queer and postcolonial theories and research on decolonization to make sense of my own lived experiences, in-between cultural realities, failed translations, and constant cultural and linguistic slippages. Similar to the Midwest college town queer culture, most queer studies scholarship was about middle-class White queer issues and lives. Once again, I needed a cultural translation. I turned to postcolonial queer theory to give me a voice, framework, and standpoint from which to speak. Spurlin (2001) writes, Queer inquiry can most productively intersect with postcolonial work and with emerging queer movements in postcolonial locations if it engages in comparative exchange so that queer studies, as they have developed in the West, do not become another master discourse of the postcolonial, if it maintains gender and sexuality as intimately entangled axes of analysis, and if it analyzes sexuality as always already mediated by gender in addition to race, geopolitical location, and class. (p. 192)

Spurlin, like other postcolonial queer theorists, was proposing new directions for queer theorists. The discourse around race, ethnicity, and geopolitical location had to be addressed by queer studies scholars. Most cultural studies scholars responded to this calling and opened up spaces for diverse queer and postcolonial scholars to speak of issues regarding “others.” Their voices cultivated a new movement where diasporic and immigrant queer issues were articulated, and the complexities of cultural identities were talked about. Traditional intercultural communication scholarship, often quantitative and historically aimed to educate U.S. Americans about the other parts of the world, on the other hand, ignored this calling for the longest time and shut itself out of the critical discourse that was taking over in similar disciplines.

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While academic literature and a limited glance at the queer university culture shaped my understanding of queer lives in the United States, the gay bar culture of a small university town impacted my understanding of queerness. The meanings of queerness were fragmented, isolated from reality, and limited to young college student experiences as well as small, rural town queer realities. Is there a space for international, diasporic, or immigrant queers in this queer picture? How do others from the queer culture or from ethnic and racial minorities understand their queer identities? The answers are far from positive. Even though mainstream U.S. queer individuals often experience oppression, discrimination, rejection, and hurt, and their lives are often threatened and regulated by laws and cultural norms and practices, the realities for ethnically and racially marked queer bodies and diasporic, transnational, and immigrant bodies are often worse. These bodies often experience discrimination and rejection not only from the larger queer culture but also from their own racial and diasporic communities. In the following story, I embody and illuminate these frictions and tensions. It was another Sunday night. Instead of sitting alone at home, I decided to join my departmental friends at the local gay bar. When I began my doctoral program, I kept the fashionable clothes that I had carried with me from previous locations, but I got rid of the closet. I was free. That night, once again, I opened the door of the bar, paid the cover, and entered the space. It was culturally marked, tucked away on the other side of the tracks. It did not have a large sign displaying the identity of the space. However, it had a large stage for drag shows and two bar areas, one in the middle and one at the back. I quickly scanned the room. Like the other nights, music was blasting and people were singing the tunes, moving their bodies left then right and up then down. Fit, young gay men were shirtless, filling the space with desire. Drag queens were running around as usual, talking and flirting with customers and getting ready for their shows. Groups of lesbians were sitting around tables, carrying out conversations. And the straight folk, those who were allies or needed a drink or wanted to dance, experimented with their sexualities or hid from the cold February night that blanketed their real-life struggles. We were all in the space looking for something different, being different, and desiring differently. I quickly found my friends, a circle of mainly White, well-educated, progressive people. I ordered the first drink of the night. It was a Sunday night, and I did not want to drink too much. A couple of different people stopped by to chat, some who worked in town, some who were students at the university, and some who had traveled far to be at the gay bar. I scanned the room again. I felt alone. Seemingly, I was the only international queer body among the other queer bodies. The space that others saw as safe or as a place where they belonged felt a bit unwelcoming that night. I watched the drag show while drag kings and queens proved that gender is a construction and performed. Their performances received big applause from the semidrunk crowd. The show always started after 11 o’clock, which meant it was after midnight. After the performance, the stage was filled with crowds

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When I sat down to write about this experience shortly after it occurred, I failed to find the intercultural frameworks and methodological lenses that would allow me to articulate this slippage and failed cultural translation. While cultural identity theories came to my defense, and Yep (1998) reminded me that our identities are fluid, open to change, and in flux, traditional intercultural communication methods provided no substantial insights to write about lived experiences within cultural contexts. This time, I turned to humanistic/performative/critical/poetic autoethnography (Holman Jones, 2010, 2016; Alexander, 2014). As I was empowered by the creativity and self-reflexivity of the method and the opportunities it afforded me to write creatively and theoretically, I quickly realized that I was mainly reading the stories of White, middle-class U.S.-American scholars. On the one hand, I recognized the limitations of the method, but on the other hand, I felt liberated. I spent more than a decade writing about intercultural communication from the margins. I translated my words from one language to another and tried to mirror my experiences and desires with the right words. But when I was removed from the queer culture that surrounded me and from the English language that helped articulate my ideas and match my words with my experiences, my queer experiences faded away. They were lost in translation. I let my queerness slip. In that intercultural moment, queerness became a faraway reality, distant from the present context. Manalansan (2005) reminds us that diasporic queers in particular refuse the assimilative framework; they not so much carry with them the baggage of tradition but rather are in constant negotiation, or—to use the idioms of biyuti and drama—selfhood and belonging are framed in the process of cultural translation and transformation. (p. 155)

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After all, making sense of queerness and having the means to articulate it are culturally bound. Language, experiences, context, and reality must align to provide certain meanings. Outside of the U.S. mainstream queer culture, often defined by and experienced in university towns, my queer identity needed new translations. I wanted to capture that slippage. Over the years, I have proposed that intercultural communication needs to expand in new directions and chart new ideological, theoretical, and methodological terrains. In order to queer intercultural communication, as IC scholars, we also need to queer and decolonize its theories and methods. Performance methodologies, critical ethnography, and autoethnography are suited to do this job. Chawla and I (2017) articulated a need to decolonize critical and cultural methods, including autoethnography, to allow scholars who are in the academic peripheries and marginalized to find entry points to articulate their voices. We wrote, “In a broad sense, decolonization processes begin with opening spaces from which the colonized can speak, thus allowing the inclusion of counternarratives that are written, spoken, performed, filmed, or otherwise created by subaltern, colonized, or oppressed groups of people” (p. 6). Hence, I proposed that decolonizing critical and cultural methods would further help queer intercultural communication, because it would allow marginalized voices to be empowered within the IC discourse. DIGITAL QUEER INTERCULTURAL TRANSLATIONS I previously argued that most intercultural communication takes place nowadays in online domains, social network sites, and geolocation-based quick media applications, and that queer intercultural communication is not exempt from these technological and cultural trends (Atay 2018a, 2018b). Not only Internet-based mainstream and queer social network sites (Facebook, Manhunt, and Gay.com) and webcam-based sexual content sites (CamFrog and Cam4) but also transnational geolocation-based mainstream and queer-hookup-oriented quick media applications (Grindr, Scruff, Hornet, and Tinder) are facilitating a tremendous number of intercultural and transnational encounters among people who are geographically dispersed. Borrowing from the idea of digital cosmopolitanism, Ong (2017) reflects on the role of geolocation-based queer media applications in Filipino culture and argues that even in times of crisis and disaster, people in general, and gay men in particular, find the time to browse through online applications. The geolocationbased queer media applications are smartphone applications that recognize the geographical location of their members. Based on these locations, they generate a list of other members based on their proximity to other users. For example, Grindr and Scruffs are geolocation-based queer media applications

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that are designed to facilitate hookups or other social and interpersonal communication among their users. Ong (2017) writes, I attend to the role of social media—hook-up apps in particular—in everyday life, and argue that these digital spaces created ambivalent opportunities for openness in the form of cosmopolitan sociality but for the most part privileged Filipino middle-class homonormativities that themselves contract aspects of Western homonormativities. (p. 657)

Hence, these sites allow different, complex, and fresh ways to move from the peripheries to the queer center to articulate different issues and present typically oppressed or marginalized voices, and they allow for different queer identity performances and displays. Even though all these opportunities exist within the parameters of capitalistic queer media outlets, they nevertheless offer new articulations and present new challenges. In the following narrative, I present queer intercultural moments, identity negotiations, and selfpresentations on geolocation-based quick media applications and other cyber platforms. I knew I had no business being on these sites. Even though I had studied Internet-based queer social network sites in depth and spent significant time participating in a cyber community for my dissertation and my first book, I had no business being on geolocation-based, queer quick media applications. I had no intentions of meeting with anyone through these sites because I am in a committed relationship. Regardless, I downloaded them. They were intriguing because they are a cultural trend, a cultural curiosity. Several clicks later, I completed profiles on three different applications. To keep my profiles consistent, I uploaded the same photo. After all, I had decided to be the same person on all of these platforms instead of presenting different aspects of myself across the three domains. We can call this queer consistency. Once I uploaded my photos, I was lured into the world of queer, hookup-based, digital worlds. The collage of bodies filled my smartphone screen, displaying the technological, cultural, and linguistic privilege of transnational, diasporic, and cosmopolitan queers. After all, we can translate among languages, cultures, and new technologies. I touched the bodies of half-naked men. Well, it was only a cyber touch. I touched the screen to scroll down. Mainly White, middle- and upper-middle-class men, well-built and attractive, typically with U.S.-centric gay beauty ideals, dominated my screen. I felt like my eyes, my postcolonial past, and body were being penetrated and once again colonized by the Western ideals, packaged in newly found opportunities to express difference and be different. I was allowed into the capitalistic consumer cultural forms, now using the latest quick applications domains to communicate. I let myself be colonized through the screen, turned first into a commodity and then a sexual object. We all become workers on these sites, oiling the capitalistic consumer culture machine with the same lubricant that we have used to massage our private parts. This is called “digitally colonizing the sexual Other.” With one click I liberated myself. I disconnected.

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I went back online again to make sense of the digitalization and commodification of queer cultures and desires within these U.S.-based geolocation quick media applications. They are transnational, since by getting online, any user of these domains can easily turn a queer man in a different part of the world into a sexual object and, if enough effort is made, perhaps into a sexual partner. Once again, I needed a cultural and technological translation to make sense of this new digital queer culture where naked or half-naked queer bodies are on display. However, while certain bodies are privileged or desired (mostly the White, fit, young or skinny bodies), the others are still silenced, ignored, or blocked. Black, Brown, or Asian bodies are mainly seen as exotic, but they have also been found unattractive. After all, despite the promises that these applications make about inclusion and empowerment, they perpetuate capitalistic and White ideals. I am stressed. My body is stressed. Within these translations, there is a slippage, a digital queer one.

I join others, such as Gajjala (2004, 2006), to argue that cyber ethnography and cyber autoethnography can function as queer and decolonizing methodologies to study multiple facets of queerness in intercultural communication. New methodologies and frameworks are needed to make sense of digital presence, absence, translation, and slippages of queer diasporic, transnational, and cosmopolitan bodies. The digital, dialogic, and transnational nature of these practices calls especially for alternative ways to examine cultural identity formations and presentations, whiteness, digital capitalism, and digitalized queer lives. TRANSLATING CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, my goal was to present interrelated stories that would allow me to theorize queer intercultural communication. Through these stories, I suggest that intercultural communication as a subdiscipline needs to queer itself to stay relevant and inclusive, and it must offer new insights into changing social, cultural, political, economic, and technological realities. First, as queer interculturalists, we need to queer our discourse by addressing issues pertaining to us and others in the field, regardless of the pushback we might receive. As an identity marker and performance, the queer approach has a lot to offer to IC scholarship. It will allow identity scholars in particular to recognize thick layers of intersectionality and politics of identity performances in everyday life. Second, we have to decolonize the IC discourse by allowing the scholarship in decolonization as well as queer decolonization to be featured in our journals and textbooks. As I pointed out earlier, most of the traditional IC scholarship is not open to include queer voices and queer contexts. This is also true for our journals. Hence, most of the queer (critical) scholarship is appearing in cultural studies journals and/or edited volumes.

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We have to actively diversify the editorial boards and venues in which we publish our research. Third, IC scholarship needs to employ new and fresh methodologies not only to decolonize but also to empower voices from the margins. For example, we have to continue to decolonize the center and include marginalized queer voices in our scholarship. We have a citationality problem; first, we have to recognize it and then we need to actively try to change it. We also embody other methodologies that might be empowering queer intercultural researchers, ranging from poetic autoethnography to mediated or autoethnographies and to digital life writing. Lastly, queer intercultural communication needs to bridge with new media scholarship to focus on digital intercultural relationships and the whiteness of digital queer selfmaking. We must recognize that most of our intercultural and queer encounters are increasingly happening in the digital platforms. Hence, we have to mindfully consider the role and the impact of these contexts. As an act of inquiry, the queering of intercultural communication will require ideological, methodological, and theoretical shifts. This is the only way diasporic, transnational, queer, feminist, and decolonizing scholars can write theoretically about their experiences in the form of stories. After all, this is the only method with which I can make sense of my own queer intercultural translations and slippages. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What could queer intercultural communication scholarship offer to critical intercultural communication scholars? 2. Why is storytelling, performance, or narrative-based method important for queer IC research? 3. Do you consider “translation” or “slippage” as potential transnational queer acts or ways of being and thinking? In what ways? KEY WORDS • • • •

Translation Slippage Academic Home Geolocation-Based Applications REFERENCES

Alexander, B. K. (2014). Bodies yearning on the borders of becoming: A performative reflection on three embodied axes of social difference. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(10), 1169–1178.

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Atay, A. (2015). Globalization’s impact on cultural identity formations: Queer diasporic males in cyberspace. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Atay, A. (2018a). Digital life writing: The failure of a diasporic, queer, blue Tinker Bell. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 9(2), 183–193. Atay, A. (2018b). Mediated intercultural communication. In A. Atay & S. Toyosaki (Eds.), Critical intercultural communication pedagogy (pp. 179–194). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Calafell, B. M. (2007). Latina/o communication studies: Theorizing performance. New York: Peter Lang. Calafell, B. M., & Gutierrez-Perez, R. (2018). (Critical) love is a battlefield: Implication for a critical intercultural pedagogical approach. In A. Atay & S. Toyosaki (Eds.), Critical intercultural communication pedagogy (pp. 49–63). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Chávez, K. R. (2009). Embodied translation: Dominant discourse and communication with migrant bodies-as-text. Howard Journal of Communications, 20(1), 18–36. Chávez, K. R. (2013). Pushing boundaries: Queer intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 83–95. Chawla, D., & Atay, A. (2017). Introduction: Decolonizing autoethnography. Cultural Studies Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 18(1), 3–8. Eguchi, S. (2015). Queer intercultural relationality: An autoethnography of Asian–Black (dis)connections in White gay America. Journal of International & Intercultural Communication, 8(1), 27–43. Eguchi, S., & Asante, G. (2016). Disidentification revisited: Queer(y)ing intercultural communication theory. Communication Theory, 26(2), 171–189. Gajjala, R. (2004). Negotiating cyberspace/negotiating RI. In A. Gonzales, M. Houston, & V. Chen (Eds.), Our voices: Essays in culture, ethnicity, and communication (pp. 82–91). Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Gajjala, R. (2006). Cyberethnography: Reading South Asian digital diaspora. In K. Landzelius (Ed.), Native on the net: Indigenous and diasporic peoples in the virtual age (pp. 272–291). London, England: Routledge. Griffin, R. A. (2015). Problematic representation of strategic whiteness and “post-racial” pedagogy: A critical intercultural reading of The Help. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 8(2), 147–166. Holman Jones, S. (2010). Burnt: Writing torch singers and torch singing. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 10(4), 283–294. Holman Jones, S. (2016). Living bodies of thought. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(4), 228–237. Jones, R. G., Jr., & Calafell, B. M. (2012). Contesting neoliberalism through critical pedagogy, intersectional reflexivity, and personal narrative: Queer tales of academia. Journal of Homosexuality, 59(7), 957–981. Manalansan, M., IV. (2005). Migrancy, modernity, mobility: Quotidian struggles and queer diasporic intimacy. In E. Luibhéid & L. Cantú Jr. (Eds.), Queer migrations: Sexuality, U.S. citizenship and border crossing (pp. 146–160). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Manalansan, M., IV. (2006). Queer intersections: Sexuality and gender in migration studies. International Migration Review, 40(1), 224–249. Ong, J. C. (2017). Queer cosmopolitanism in the disaster zone: “My Grindr became the United Nations.” International Communication Gazette, 79(6–7), 656–673. Spurlin, W. J. (2001). Broadening postcolonial studies/decolonizing queer studies: Emerging “queer” identities and cultures and Southern Africa. In J. C. Hawley (Ed.), Post-colonial, queer: Theoretical intersections (pp. 185–205). Albany: State University of New York Press. Toyosaki, S., & Chuang, H. S. (2018). Critical intercultural communication pedagogy from within: Textualizing intercultural and intersectional self-reflexivity. In A. Atay & S. Toyosaki (Eds.), Critical intercultural communication pedagogy (pp. 227–247). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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Yep, G. A. (1998). My three cultures: Navigating the multicultural identity landscape. In J. N. Martin, T. K. Nakayama, & L.A Flores (Eds.), Readings in intercultural communication (pp. 60–66). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Yep, G. A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 118–126.

Chapter Eight

“Queerly Ambivalent” Navigating Global and Local Normativities in Postcolonial Ghana Godfried Asante

Embodying and negotiating nonnormative sexuality at the nexus of multiple transnational social relations based on race, class, gender, immigration status, nation, and body, positions queers of color in many intersecting sites of power relations where they have to negotiate differential levels of agency in order to survive and thrive. Given this intersectional complexity, queers of color have strategically developed intellectual, aesthetic, and political forms of identity performance to navigate interlocking oppressions such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism (Eguchi & Asante, 2016). As a Black/ African same-gender-loving cisgender migrant in the United States, my unique intersections position me in relation to hierarchical systems not only of race, class, gender, and sexuality but also of coloniality and geopolitical power (Alexander, 1997; Altman, 1996; Arondekar, 2005; Puar, 2017). I am consistently navigating a multicomplex structure of power relations where the inseparable embodiment of my queerness and “blackness/Africanness” resists and co-opts the elusive ways through which socially constructed matrices of cultural normalcy, such as those called U.S. American, first-world, White, male, heterosexual/cisgender, upper-middle-class, and able-bodied, become recentered in processes of intercultural communication. Given this material reality, it is essential for queer intercultural communication scholars to continually unpack how multiple systems of power intersect to produce specific texts of knowledge embedded in the material realities of non-Western, non-White queers of color.

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Antihomosexuality bills emerging in African nations such as Uganda, Gambia, Senegal, Malawi, and Nigeria have brought global attention to the precarious subject positions of LGBTIQ+ people in Africa. Investigative reports from international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have produced narratives of immense human rights abuses in countries such as Nigeria, the Gambia, and Tanzania. In Ghana, same-sex relations are muted and made politically invisible by moral entrepreneurs such as religious and political leaders who perceive same-sex sexual relations as demonic and a strategy of U.S. imperialism to destroy “African culture” (Asante, 2019). Although the global attention to LGBTIQ+ rights in Africa is warranted, various media reports, predominantly from Western media agencies, have reactivated colonial imaginations of African sexuality as “backward,” “under-developed,” and “still evolving” and the West as progressive and problematically evolved sexually (Hoad, 2007; Jungar & Peltonen, 2017). Moreover, LGBTIQ+ Africans are also represented as without voice and, therefore, needing to be saved (Ndashe, 2013). Thoreson (2014) explained that the Western discourse of “homophobic Africa” elides how homophobia in Africa is discursively produced and transnationally mediated. It is also vital to add that public expression of homophobia and antiLGBTIQ+ violence in many parts of Africa is not unique to Africa. Additionally, the various forms of oppressive structures are consistently and regularly being resisted by LGBTIQ+ Africans in subtle but transformative ways. In the sociopolitical and material context of Ghana, same-gender-loving men who identify themselves as Sasso have created queer ways of relating to structures and institutions that disrupt hegemonic heteropatriarchal Christian masculinity and the Western cultural norms disseminated through the White male embodiment of “gayness.” Sasso is a queer linguistic code used primarily among same-gender-loving men in Ghana to identify safe spaces, friends, and potential partners. Sasso is not the same as “gay,” and it does not always imply a person’s sexual orientation. Most often, it points to someone’s sexual ambivalence. Sasso experiences of queerness highlight the intricate ways legacies of colonization, neocolonialism, transnational LGBTIQ+ human rights, and the global dissemination of Western gay culture collide with a dynamic local sexual culture to produce particular glocalized and hybridized experiences of nonnormative sexuality. In this chapter, I explore what I term “the queerly ambivalent” as a queer mode of relating that explores the space between institutional constraints and individual agency. In defining queerness, Muñoz (2009) reinforced the position that Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. (p. 1, emphasis in original)

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Muñoz notes that queerness provides a blueprint to concrete possibilities for another world. A desire for queer futurity propels the imagination of this queer world. By locating queerness as a longing, possibilities emerge that resist the tantalizing tentacles of the present and its abstract utopias divorced from its sociopolitical and colonial productions. Muñoz explains concrete utopias as the “hope of a collective . . . the one who dreams for many” (p. 2). In light of Muñoz’s theorization of queerness, being “queerly ambivalent” in the postcolonial context of Ghana is an enactment of a concrete utopia. Queer intercultural communication scholars have drawn attention to the ways U.S.-based queer research favors and responds to the needs of Westernbased, White, male, middle-class, able-bodied queer subjects (Chávez, 2013). A significant body of queer scholarship in communication studies still emphasizes the United States and other Western countries (Eguchi & Asante, 2016). While current queer scholarship has produced a large knowledge base for the study of sexuality, the theoretical focus contributes to the lives of queers in the West (e.g., Halberstam, 2005; Muñoz, 1999; Stryker, 2008). Using the West as a base to make broader arguments, other queer scholarship has emphasized how Western-based queerness and gayness travel and operate transnationally (Eng, 2010; Puar, 2017). Even though research that focuses on queer people in Africa has burgeoned in the last decade (e.g., Ekine & Abbas, 2013; Epprecht, 1998; Hoad, 2007; Tamale, 2011), research on queer Africans remains limited in queer intercultural communication studies. In a rapidly globalizing world where Western, male, able-bodied, cisgender notions of queerness circulate the globe as the universal ways of being “queer,” queer intercultural communication scholars need to show the profound ways through which those with nonWestern racialized, gendered, and sexual identities challenge, resist, and enact their identities within/across the boundaries of the nation (Eguchi, 2015; Chávez, 2013). As such, writing about queerness from the margins and especially from a postcolonial space is essential to furthering the critical impulse of queer intercultural communication research because, besides that fact that queer voices from the African continent are mainly missing from queer intercultural communication research, focusing on Africa as a spatial context offers possibilities for decentering the White, capitalist, homonormative, gay male view of queerness. Drawing on queer of color critique and postcolonial studies, I situate the bodies of Sasso within the genealogy of queer intercultural communication research to examine how same-sex desires and transnational dissemination of gay identities are negotiated within the material context of postcolonial Ghana. The goal of this chapter is not to suggest that queers in Ghana all “do this” or “do that” but to provide a blueprint for a queer futurity and the possibilities for decolonization. Below, I describe the historical contexts that produce the contemporary material reality of anti-LGBTIQ+ violence and

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discrimination in Ghana. Next I explore critical intersections between queer intercultural communication and postcolonial studies. Then I expand on what “queerly ambivalent” means by providing narratives from Sasso. Finally, I conclude the chapter by calling for queer intercultural communication to make critical investments in Africa as a spatial context for the theorizing of queerness. SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT OF SAME-SEX SEXUAL RELATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY GHANA The formation of the postcolonial nation-state is, as some scholars have pointed out, structured around a heteronormative masculinist ethos. Marc Epprecht (2008) notes that nationalist symbols exclusive of heterosexuality have been used to entice African elites in the postcolonial states. These nationalist constructions are residual heteropatriarchal structures left over by the colonial state at the turn of independence (McClintock, 2013; Stoler, 2010). Here I do not argue that heteropatriarchy emerged with the onset of colonialism. Rather, colonial ideologies and practices implanted a new heteropatriarchal apparatus onto existing patriarchal regimes. Using the Caribbean postcolonial states as an example, Alexander (1997) coined the term heteropatriarchal re-colonization: “The continuity between the white heteropatriarchal inheritance and black heteropatriarchy” (p. 66). She explained that the struggle to break free from colonialism was largely a political project that involved minimal resistance to the Western economic interests and heteropatriarchal structures. She contended that nationalist movements used the same militarized masculinities as a foundation for liberation, thereby maintaining the nonstatus of women and upholding heterosexuality as the basis for citizenship. The historical context of same-sex relations in many parts of West Africa shows that gender-nonconforming people who did not fit neatly within the Western gender binary of “man” or “woman” were affectionately incorporated into the social fabric of many tribal and ethnic groups (e.g., Murray & Roscoe, 1998). Prior to colonization, queer effeminacy and gender-nonconforming people were incorporated into a cultural system of social in/visibility. In this historical moment, nonnormative sexuality, sex between people of the same sex, was not criminalized, even though it was not sometimes socially tolerated. As numerous scholars have pointed out, different formations of same-sex relationships and same-sex sexual patterns existed in West Africa that did not neatly align with the contemporary notions of same-sex cohabitation or same-sex marriage (e.g., Amadiume, 2015; Murray & Roscoe, 1998). However, the historical context of colonialism and its neocolonial aftermath has shifted the social markings of nonnormative sexuality and recalibrated

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same-sex desires as antithetical to the postcolonial nation-state and heteronormative kinship structures. The influence of European colonialism in the formation of the postcolonial nation-state continually impacts the ways Sasso navigate the consistent policing of same-sex desires, relations, and intimacies. Article 105 of the Ghana Criminal Code states, “Whomever is guilty of unnatural carnal knowledge (a) of any person without his consent is guilty of first-degree felony, or (b) of any person with his consent or of any animal, is guilty of a misdemeanor.” Although its enforcement is limited to serious offenses such as pedophilia and rape, same-sex sexual relations garner much public attention in Ghana. Dissimilar to other African countries such as Nigeria or the Gambia, individual identification as “gay” or “lesbian” in Ghana does not warrant an arrest by the Ghana police. In fact, the Ghana police have sometimes made arrests of individuals who assault others because of their avowed sexual orientation. Nonetheless, workplace discrimination and mob violence against those identified as “homosexual” continue to occur by ordinary citizens—neighbors and family members who are guided by an ideological impulse that same-sex sexual relations are the cause of Ghana’s economic downturn (Asante, 2019). Ghanaian Pentecostalist Charismatic Church leaders (GPCCs) are the most outspoken dominant group against any discussions about the decriminalization of same-sex sexual relations in Ghana (Asante, 2019; Tettey, 2016). O’Mara (2007) explained that religious leaders currently wield significant political power in Ghana because extreme cases of poverty and unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s under successive military regimes resulted in a massive brain drain there. During this time, religious fundamentalism became popular, which also contributed to the heightened sense of homophobia in Ghana. They have positioned “homosexuals” as pathological, unhealthy, devils, demons, and reasons for God’s cursing of Ghana. Consequently, religious leaders’ opinions about same-sex sexual relations are universalized as public views and publicized as general Ghanaian sentiments about same-sex sexual relations. Accordingly, politicians use the public disdain for same-sex sexual relations to win political points by showing their political ideologies as severely antihomosexuality. With this in mind, police officers hardly pursue cases involving anti-LGBTIQ+ discrimination unless the case involves a government official or a celebrity. The lack of protection from police officers and government entities positions same-sex sexual relations as outside the legal circuits of state protection. Accordingly, Sasso are treated as second-class citizens, and those who experience violence or loss of family support hardly ever seek assistance from their immediate family, NGOs, or the government. Against constraining government resources and anti-LGBTIQ+ religious rhetoric is the continued resilience of queers and community activists in Ghana.

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Since around 2007, many Sasso have emerged from their unseen closets to visible areas of public life to seek active and assertive engagement with other Sasso, civic society, state officials, and I/NGOs. Alongside such increasing visibility and accompanying activism is the growing presence and intervention of global institutions and organizations. Their engagement with local LGBTIQ+ nongovernmental organizations has reinforced the false claim from GPCC leaders that same-sex sexuality has been imposed on Africans by the West. As shown above, the historical and contemporary sociopolitical contexts around same-sex sexuality in Ghana influence the various normativities and the material contexts that Sasso navigate to find spaces for resistance and survival. INCORPORATING QUEER POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES Queer theory is used as an umbrella term to problematize assumptions about the homo/heterosexual binaries that stabilize and naturalize heterosexuality (Sedgwick, 1990; Yep, Lovaas, & Elia, 2003). Although queer theory has a tremendous influence on mainstream queer research, less prominence has been placed on the intersectional modes of sexuality, race, sex/gender, and body across multiple sociopolitical, economic, and historical positionings (Eng, Halberstam, & Muñoz, 2005). Queer of color criticism emerged as an intersectional approach to the theorizing of identity and subjectivity. Troubled by the whiteness of queer theory, the heteronormativity of ethnic studies and in communities of color, queer of color critique, according to Ferguson (2003), “interrogates social formations at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class with particular attention to how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices” (p. 149). Queer of color criticism offers a much more complex understanding of sexuality that can provide a substantial critique that goes beyond the single focus of sexual identity and sex. The work of Roderick Ferguson (2004) and Eng, Halberstam, and Muñoz (2005) constitutes conceptual boundaries through which queer of color criticism continues as a potential site for academic inquiry, intervention, and activism, because sexuality is intersectional, not extraneous to other modes of difference. Intersectionality is a relevant theme in queer of color criticism and queer intercultural communication, and also in this chapter. Crenshaw (1991) was the first to use the term intersectionality to describe the experiences of minority women and violence. Using case studies from a women’s shelter, she argued that the experiences of African American women could not be reduced to a category of “all women” or all “Black women.” She asserted, While the intersection of race, gender, and class constitute the primary structural elements of the experience of many Black and Latina women in battering

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shelters, it is important to understand that there are other sites where structures of power intersect. For immigrant women, for example, their status as immigrants can render them vulnerable in ways that are similarly coercive, yet not easily reducible to economic class. (1991, p. 9)

For Crenshaw, systems of domination intersect to produce racialized gendered and sexual experiences. Much of intersectional theory, for example, has critiqued race-only or gender-only frameworks, which may ameliorate the effects of one system of oppression while simultaneously reinforcing other power structures. Collins (2000) argued that intersectionality is an analysis claiming that “systems of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation and age form mutually constructing features of social organization, which shape black women’s experiences and in turn, are shaped by black women” (p. 299). She referred to the various intersections of social inequality as the matrix of domination. These are also known as vectors of oppression and privilege. Scholars who center intersectionality contend that social phenomena and social inequalities are best understood through the examination of overlapping institutional power structures (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Feminist of color theorizing of intersectionality provides the theoretical lens to critique the historical and ongoing social formations of subject positions that limit queer African positionalities as the archetypal “victims” of Africa’s innate homophobia, by providing counternarratives of resistance and critique of the singularity of experience. The totalization of queer African experiences as perpetual victims through homonationalistic discourses of U.S. exceptionalism traps queer African being and belonging in an either/or mode. However, this chapter shows that negotiations of power are not through the singular modes of transgression or hegemony but a complex interplay that is messy, spontaneous, and ambivalent (Eguchi & Asante, 2016; McCune, 2008). The danger in assuming that queers from Africa are equally oppressed across the continent oversimplifies the particularity and historical complexity of queer African subject formation. In Ghana, different Sasso engage with institutions and transnational structures with multiple levels of political and economic agency depending on which cultural identities in relation to gender, race, class and educational status are salient in a given context. While queer of color criticism in particular has critically engaged with issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, and the body in addressing such inadequacies, some studies have overlooked how their position in the colonial imperial center “orients” (Ahmed, 2006) their scholarship to view the rest of the world from that colonial center. Ahmed states, “The lines that allow us to find our way, those that are ‘in front’ of us also make certain things, and not others, available . . . when we follow specific lines, some things become

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reachable, and others remain or even become out of reach” (p. 14). Ahmed suggests that it matters where we write from. Critiquing the nonchalance of queer theory toward knowledge produced from bodies marked as “African,” Keguro Macharia (2016) contests his subject position as a “native informant” who refuses to add to the list of U.S.-based queer theorizing that needs research from the Global South to “prove” queer people exist everywhere or to confirm queer theories in the Global North. He contends that for queer theory to productively engage with the rest of the world, queer scholars need to engage with Africa as a spatial context where particular forms of meanings about gender and sexuality focus on how Africans engage with themselves and non-White Others rather than, as Yue (2008) cautions, on the consistent resituating of the Global North as the center for queer being and belonging. In light of these concerns, U.S.-based queer scholars of color and nonWestern queer scholars have brought attention to the political and theoretical inadequacies of queer theory to make intelligible certain non-Western, nonWhite sexual formations. For instance, for queer scholars of color in the United States, the proverbial construct of “coming out of the closet” has been critiqued as Western-centric and also embedded within the logics of whiteness and Western modernity. Earlier scholarly work by queer transnational scholars such as Manalansan (1995) critiqued the “closet paradigm” as an inadequate framework when writing about queers in non-Western settings. He contended, “By privileging Western definitions of same-sex sexual practices, non-Western practices are marginalized and seen as premodern and unliberated. Practices that do not conform with Western narratives of development of individual political subjects are dismissed as unliberated or coded as homophobic” (p. 489). Manalansan (1995) calls into question the functionality and practicality of the very notion of the Western queer liberal project of “coming out,” now that it circulates globally as a universal narrative of how to be queer. This chapter draws on postcolonial scholarship as a context and condition of nonnormative sexuality in contemporary Africa (Hoad, 2007). Situating the regulation of intimacy, kinship, and desire as relevant to the cultural critique of postcolonialism shows the ongoing connections and disconnections between colonialism and conceptions of modernity between queers in the Global North in relation to queers in the Global South (Hawley, 2001). Since the goal of postcolonial theory is deconstruction and disruption of colonial forms of knowledge production and their influence in contemporary national politics, queer theory builds on postcolonial theory by bringing gender and sexual identity as central to how the body is constituted in racialized discourses of the postcolonial nation-state. Furthermore, postcolonial theory offers possibilities for decolonization and resistance to the continual scrutiny and policing of nonnormative sexuality.

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Queer postcolonial studies offer insights into how gay identities from the West are taken up or resisted in non-Western contexts. By merging insights and tensions between the postcolonial and the queer, queer postcolonial scholars have taken into account the ways race emerges as a site that has been historically as well as contemporaneously sexualized. For instance, in her influential work on homonationalism, Puar (2017) argued that contemporary U.S.-based LGBTIQ+ identities have been co-opted by the current forces of securitization, counterterrorism and nationalism. In this configuration of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class, and ethnicity, specific queer bodies are incorporated into the U.S. prowar, proimperialist agendas to serve the interest of global capital and as reasons for military invasion. Specifically, queer postcolonial scholars take the nation-state and the intricate policing of the boundaries of heteronormativity and homonormativity as crucial objects of analysis. Thus, any analysis of nonnormative sexuality in Ghana must take into account the transnational ebbs and flows of globalized representations and discourses of queerness that come to constitute particular experiences of sexuality in Ghana. Following Eguchi and Asante (2016), I maintain that examining others’ ways of knowing, being, and acting potentially creates new/alternative intellectual spaces of articulating and imagining intercultural communication. This means paying attention to geohistorical origin and the uses and failures of African-ness to create shared ground around sexuality, rather than singling out sexuality. In doing so, different conversations emerge as queer theory and queer of color criticism are rearticulated and reimagined through the bodies of those who live and enact their sexual identity from the periphery of the colonial/imperial center. I am not advocating for an uncritical understanding of queerness through the binary of the West and the rest, but it is essential to understand bodies as situated in space, place, and “placelessness.” The focus on the body and its performances of transgression and resistance to normativities within queer intercultural communication research enables postcolonial sexual subjects to speak back from spaces and locations that are consistently made invisible through geopolitical erasures. The focus of research should not only highlight voices or experiences but also consider how the queer performances of survival illuminate intersectional erasures, multiplicity, and the noncategorical, lived experiences of Sasso. The focus on the practice of “everydayness” and bodies means queer intercultural communication is taking seriously the effects of modernities as a necessary entry of theoretical departure that sees the postcolonial culture as a site where queerness rearticulates citizenship, family, and home through everyday mundane and infrapolitical practices of resistance.

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THEORIZING “QUEERLY AMBIVALENT” “Queerly ambivalent” captures the tensed space between the desires for same-sex pleasure and the need to maintain familial relationships and avoid discrimination and anti-LGBTIQ+ violence. Jose Muñoz’s (1999) work on disidentifications and Homi Bhabha’s (1994) theorizing of ambivalence can be used to describe as queerly ambivalent the everyday practices of resistance and survival that draw on dominant (colonial) cultural codes. The postcolonial theorizing of ambivalence offers the theoretical energy to resist the stifling constraints of suffocating identities and restrictive boundaries of Ghanaian citizenship and transnational dissemination of gay identity by the West by mimicking performances of Ghanaian heteropatriarchal citizenship that at the same time mock it by refusing to abide by its totalizing rules. Bhabha (1994) adapted the concept of ambivalence into postcolonial theory to describe the complex intermingling that characterized the relationship between colonizer and colonized. He wrote that the problem of colonial discourse is that it wants to produce compliant subjects who just reproduce assumptions, habits, and values—that is, mimic the colonizer. However, the process produces ambivalent subjects whose mimicry is never far from mockery. Mimicry and mockery might not only be used to resist Western colonial discourse, but in the current postcolonial context of Ghana, they can be used to subvert heteropatriarchal masculinist discourses and performance that rely on exclusive heterosexuality and the debasement of queer femininity. Disidentification is a rhetorically practiced form of identity that co-opts dominant constructs to resist its potential to discipline. Muñoz (1999) maintained, “The process of disidentification scrambles and reconstructs the encoded message of a cultural text in a fashion that both exposes the encoded message’s universalizing and exclusionary machinations and recircuits its workings to account for, include, and empower minority identities and identifications” (p. 31). Disidentification together with ambivalence provides the lens to examine how one situates oneself both within and against the various discourses through which we are called to identify. Queerly ambivalent describes the queer practice of disidentification through the ability to co-opt power in order to create or recover other kinds of intersecting identifications that are eclipsed by power relations. To explore queerly ambivalent, I focus on the emergence of a particular Ghanaian gay culture called “classy”: a glocalized queer performance of gayness that “mimics” and “mocks” heteropatriarchal masculinity in Ghana and the Western construct of gayness through the rhetorical practice of disidentification by refusing to identify with the heteronormativity of Ghanaian cultural citizenship and the homonormativity of Western gay identity while simultaneously drawing on them.

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QUEERING CLASSY “Classy” is an enactment of queerly ambivalent and it is constituted by notions of heteropatriarchy, Western-mediated forms of “gay culture” centered on fashion and style, and a culture of sexual invisibility in Ghana. “Classy” has multiple meanings to different Sasso based on the intersections of their gender and class positions. For instance, some Sasso enact classy by mimicking Western gay, campy cultural performances, including imitating a British English dialect in order to mimic the class positioning that comes with having a British English dialect in Ghana. Others are classy because they have good-paying jobs, are educated, can get visas and travel abroad, and have access to family wealth. Ultimately, class positioning intersects with sexuality and gender to produce the cultural performance of classy. For instance, one’s access to family wealth, ability to speak English, ability to travel, light-skin privileges, and ability to perform heterosexist masculinity always informs the enactment of classy. Subsequently, by examining classy, we are able to explore how multiple intersecting identities and historical contexts merge to produce particular experiences of queerness in the cultural context of Ghana. In the following, I harness specific narratives about classy from my conversations with Sasso in Ghana to show moments of “queerly ambivalence.” In 2017, I went back to Ghana to theorize about queerly ambivalent by examining the culturally specific nuances of queerness that shape queer culture in Ghana. Through interviews with coparticipants about the various ways we/they navigate anti-LGBTIQ+ violence and enact same-sex desires, classy became a central topic of contention. For instance, during a conversation with a group of Sasso in Accra, Adam said the following about classy: “There is a word trending among the gay community in Ghana now called ‘classy.’ I do not know where and how this word became a thing in the Ghanaian gay community.” Another coparticipant, Kwaku, responded, “I think what he is trying to say is that there is a hierarchy among the Ghanaian gay community; the shirt I am wearing is $30; the one you are wearing is from Kantamanto.” (Kantamanto is an area in Accra where secondhand clothing from Europe and the United States is traded.) For instance, Sasso who buy clothes from Kantamanto are perceived as having lower socioeconomic status than those who buy clothes from high-end shops and shopping malls. Throughout my interviews with Sasso, the conversations around classy always ended up in a heated debate. On the one hand, some believed that the enactment of classy as a specific performance of “gayness” in Ghana provides the ambivalence that provides agency to navigate between familial expectations and the potential for anti-LGBTIQ+ violence. Others, such as Adam, believed that performances of classy served to discipline effeminate

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Sasso who lacked financial resources. In response to Adam, Jeffrey, a journalist in Accra, offered the following: We live in a society where there is a daily threat of anti-LGBT violence. So, to protect yourself and be free from violence, you need to express yourself in a way that these people will not identify you as such. It is easy for others to know who you are if you are not discreet about your sexuality. I don’t want to use the word hate, but it detests me when I see “gay” men wearing feminine clothes because I am a media person and sometimes we work on stories which bash gay people and all that. So, I do not want to be associated with easily predictable characters. I don’t want to live in a community where I would be easily identified as one [gay]. So, the classy thing is not necessarily to shun people away but to make you not stand out and behave appropriately. Because we live in a community where [LGBT] people are attacked. So, the classy thing sometimes helps someone like me because I do not want to be a victim.

Jeffrey’s statement above shows that classy can be empowering for those with higher socioeconomic class positioning and those who do not embody queer effeminacy. However, it could be disempowering for those who fall short of these identity hierarchies. This ties in with Crenshaw’s (1991) definition of intersectionality that people have different sociopolitical, economic, and cultural identities through which they can simultaneously experience oppression and/or privilege. In this vein, while Jeffrey could experience discrimination as Sasso, he also enjoys relative privilege in relation to his gendered performances of heteropatriarchal masculinity and socioeconomic class status. Jeffrey’s expression of classy is influenced by the global dissemination of Western gay male culture where queer femininity, fashion, and style inform a particular form of transgression or subversion over other restrictive gender categories (Eguchi, 2009). The debasement of queer femininity in Jeffrey’s comment is also a product of the patriarchal cultural traditions and systems in Ghana that were syncretized with the heteronormative ethos of British colonialization. Ultimately, while Jeffrey is resisting heteropatriarchal systems and structures through his embodiment of Sasso, he is also reproducing variants of heteropatriarchy through the debasement of queer effeminacy. Jeffrey’s comment becomes exceptionally significant when he describes the ways he navigates queerness both at his workplace and at home. I asked him how he finds sexual partners. He explained that every Saturday, he joins his “heterosexual” friends at the soccer park to “scout” for potential sexual partners by sitting around, randomly chatting with men he “suspects” are queer in some way but not necessarily gay (which he equates to queer effeminacy). At the soccer park, he likes to strike up conversations with friends of friends or neighborhood acquaintances. During conversations at the soccer park, he participates in sexual talk about women but also gesticulates toward

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same-sex sexual interests with other men through culturally acceptable, homosocial, nonverbal actions such as holding hands, touching, and tickling each other, among others. Disidentification is relevant here as a modality through which minoritarian subjects recycle encoded meaning. The soccer park is a heteronormative space where hypermasculinity pervades and homosocial relations are not supposed to be romantic or sexual. However, the soccer park is precisely the space where Jeffrey goes to seek potential sexual partners and sexual pleasure. By mimicking heteropatriarchal masculinity, Jeffrey is able to tap into the ambivalent meanings produced by the cultural acceptance of male same-sex intimacy to seek sexual pleasure. He engages in disidentification—identification with heteropatriarchal masculinity, represented through his engagement with the soccer fans and players, that simultaneously uses that expression of masculinity for homoerotic ends and interests, running in contrast to the starkly heterosexist and heteronormative ends of these spaces. In doing so, Jeffrey allows for alternate, nonnormative readings of such spaces and bodies. One might ask if Jeffrey is putting himself in harm’s way by seeking sexual partners in spaces where hypermasculinity is valued and any hint of homosexuality could be met with violence. He responded that they cannot prove he is “gay,” because he is not effeminate and that is all that matters. Jeffrey negotiates his queerness through identification and disidentification with hypermasculinity, heterosexism, homosociality, and the in/visibility of “gayness,” read as queer effeminacy. In another conversation, Joe, a hairstylist in Accra, described how he avoids anti-LGBTIQ+ violence and maintains familial support by being classy, which entails adherence to Western gay norms or rules that include dating only White men. Also for Joe, classy equates to not being effeminate. We have something we call the White-hunters, those who are only dating White men. We have a way we do our stuff. We don’t talk too much. We go to certain places, and if you give us an invitation to certain parties, we will not attend. When you read Michelle Visage’s book about Diva Rules, it tells you what to do so that you stand out. I work, and because of the way I carry myself, I have fewer problems at my workplace. I have a friend at work who was very feminine and people did not want to talk to him, so he had to leave the workplace. Everyone was like, “You are gay, and you are making it known.” What makes the classiness comes in is that we are all gay, and love to be who we are but we have to be careful. I have friends who are straight, and it’s just that some Sasso do not carry themselves well, and we don’t need them to tarnish us so I go to parties and I see gay men wearing weaves and acting feminine, I will not talk to you.

Joe’s comment that the “White-hunters” desire White men only shows the ways the transnational mediations of racialized desires historically con-

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structed through colonial constructions of White superiority and wealth come to constitute same-sex desires across transnational borders. Within the sociohistorical context of the Ghanaian economy, Sasso are typically economically disenfranchised due to social norms and stigma that prevent the majority from maintaining good-paying jobs. Also, within the sociopolitical context of the criminalization of same-sex desires and neoliberal government policies that restrict funding for social programs, keeping a “White” boyfriend (coded as access to the West, wealth, and privileges) could provide a chance for some Sasso to emigrate to Europe or the United States or to gain financial stability locally. Therefore, performances of classy have social benefits, such as having access to a “rich White man.” Furthermore, Joe’s explanation of classy relies on identification with a particular Western construction of “gayness,” as exemplified through his reading of Michelle Visage’s book The Diva Rules. However, his articulation of classy also provides the opportunity for him to queer the homonormativity of Western gay politics that relies on visibility politics. He mentioned that his family is aware of his sexual desires for men even though they never discuss it openly. He indicated that it is his identity performance of classy (coded as masculine, classed performances of queerness) that has allowed him to navigate the vague silence around his sexuality without losing his family’s financial and emotional support or his job. In response to a participant who said classy is discriminatory, Joe said, “I have a kid brother; he likes me because I am diplomatic about it [gayness]. I am not like others who are so loud about it. So, my family respects me for who I am.” In response to another participant who described how classy could be disempowering to the political goals of LGBTIQ+ activism in Ghana, Joe responded with an anecdote: I do celebrities’ hair, and one day while doing the hair of a Ghanaian celebrity, she asked, “Oh, you are a hairstylist, and you are not gay? I have a gay cousin I would want to introduce to you.” However, I was saying in my head that, of course, I am gay. But because I was not doing feminine stuff, she did not know I am gay. I don’t think it’s about discrimination; it’s about survival.

Even though Joe’s enactment of queerness draws on Western notions of gayness, he also resists its epistemological centeredness on visibility or coming out because of the sociopolitical and postcolonial cultural context. In other words, while his family is aware of his same-sex attraction, he is not openly “out” to them. His coworkers equally assume he might have same-sex desires, but he refuses to explicitly “come out” to them verbally. His daily enactments of same-sex attraction in Ghana through classy overshadow any suspicion of gayness (perceived through queer effeminacy) which could expose him to violence and workplace discrimination. At the same time, he is

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not read as heterosexual. For example, he mentioned that he brought his Australian boyfriend to his house to meet his family even though he did not overtly mention their close relationship to them. In Joe’s experience, classy is characterized by ambivalent meanings, and the meanings allowed by his performances of classy (a classed and gendered performance of heteropatriarchal masculinity) resist and recycle encoded meaning while also drawing on them to navigate the postcolonial cultural context. Under these circumstances, effeminate Sasso who do not have the class privileges, educational background, access to family wealth, and ability to get visas to travel are labeled as not classy, thereby creating a hierarchy of class and gender differences where queer femininity is coded as poor and involves a general lack of poise and self-determination. Consequently, effeminate Sasso who experience anti-LGBTIQ+ violence or workplace discrimination tend to be blamed for their lack of self-care and for their openness about their sexuality. The statements from Jeffrey and Joe equate queer effeminacy with “gayness.” Their comments show that the contemporary debasement of effeminate Sasso in Ghana emerges within a particular postcolonial and sociocultural context. Given the propensity for homophobic violence, globalized LGBTIQ+ visibility politics, and the cultural silences around sexuality in Ghana, effeminate Sasso disrupt ambivalent meanings, which some Sasso deploy to navigate their same-sex desires and familial relationships. Subsequently, performances of classy materialize as a normative-gendered performance of queer masculinity even though such performances rely on the debasement of femininity and queer effeminacy in its articulation and identity performance. While this interpretation may seem that these Sasso are closeted and have significantly internalized homophobia, I caution against this interpretation. The debasement of queer femininity does not necessarily reflect their views on same-sex desires or male-to-male sex. In the United States, sissyphobia emerges in a different historical and sociocultural context. Examining the rhetorical strategy of “straight-acting” among gay men in an online setting, Eguchi (2009) found out that effeminate queer men violate normative-gendered performative expressions that are valued particularly by “straight-acting” gay men. Analyzing Black gay men and their performances of queerness in a club space, McCune (2008) also contended that “down low” (DL) is a performance of queerness where race, gender, and sexuality intersect to reenact Black masculine ideals and queer desire through the performative acts of “coolness.” In the performance of coolness at the gay club, forms of misogyny and the debasement of femininity come to play in the club space as a backdrop where “all black queer men can participate and feel normal” (p. 310). Similarly, gender, class, and sexuality intersect to reenact Ghanaian masculine norms and queer desire even though these acts are enacted against the backdrop of the debasement of

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queer femininity. Nonetheless, Sasso are finding ways to queer restrictive categories and identities by using dominant cultural codes to create ambivalence around their “gayness” while finding creative opportunities to seek subversion and social transformation. CONCLUDING REMARKS: TOWARD CULTURE-SPECIFIC NUANCES OF QUEERNESS In this chapter, I have explored what I call being queerly ambivalent, an identity-negotiating strategy that disidentifies with the normative constructions of heteropatriarchal masculinity and the global presence of Western forms of gayness that circulate the world through mediated forms of “coming out,” gay families, gay neighborhoods, gay bars and clubs, and gay sex cultures (Perez, 2005). These narratives are also a fraction of the multitude of ways that Sasso navigate various normativities at once. To further reiterate, queerly ambivalent should not be construed as “what queers in Africa do” but rather as an entry into a discussion of how Sasso in Ghana queer dominant normative spaces. Queer of color criticism and queer postcolonial studies allow for critical engagement with a dynamic body navigating multiple planes at once through local, global, and transnational mediations of neoliberal and market control (Calafell, 2017). In doing so, it is essential that scholars in queer intercultural communication pay fervent attention to the material facts of other bodies and their lived experience as a site of theorizing power and resistance to coloniality and heteropatriarchal relations that marginalize nonnormative sexuality as antithetical to the heteronormative construction of African cultural citizenship (Epprecht, 2008). In her analysis of contemporary queer politics in the United States, critical race and queer of color theorist Cathy Cohen (1997) elucidated how efforts for queer visibility politics privilege sexual oppression over other sites of oppression such as race, class, and nationality (Johnson, 2001). Cohen’s critical diagnosis, while limited to LGBTIQ+ politics in the United States, presents useful insights to examining the impacts of LGBTIQ+ visibility politics in Ghana. Cohen’s example of queer visibility in the United States reveals how LGBTIQ+ politics in the United States disenfranchises those queers who, trapped by their racial and class historical moments, become disposable bodies. Referring to the experiences of Black queers in the United States, she shows how race and class formations, which are hierarchically structured, shackle the lives of these minorities. In Ghana, transnational LGBTIQ+ visibility politics pose a dilemma to some Sasso whose sexual culture in some ways thrives through a culture of invisibility and ambiva-

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lence to navigate the potential for anti-LGBTIQ+ violence, workplace discrimination, and loss of family support. Intersectionality is thus used to disentangle the complex layers of identity, categories, and experiences that form the everyday life of Sasso in Ghana. Emerging concepts of intersectionality within queer intercultural communication can disengage categorical notions for analysis and call upon more profound reflections that present strategies of negotiation and ultimately reveal the ways agency becomes enacted in specific complicated sociopolitical and postcolonial contexts. As Sasso move along different pathways, in the wider sociopolitical, economic, and cultural environment, the relevance of an intersectional approach to the analysis of social categories cannot be overemphasized. Thus, queerly ambivalent reminds us of the necessity to resist categorical thinking especially at the nexus of colonial difference (Lugones, 2010). This chapter adds to critical discussions on decentering heteronormativity, cisgenderism, and whiteness in queer theory. To continually decenter the whiteness and U.S./Western-centeredness of queer theorizing, queer intercultural communication research should regularly have productive and critical engagements with non-Western theorizing of queerness to further saturate the racialized and gendered body as also a colonized body anchored within a particular place and space (Lugones, 2010). This chapter ends with a call for queer intercultural communication scholars to engage with postcolonial settings and spaces, such as Ghana, not as an addendum or as a context for the explanation of Western theories but as a space of knowledge production that opens up more questions about the political utility of queer theory in Africa. Currier and Migraine-George (2016) note that African studies and queer theory have more in common politically than has been previously theorized. Macharia (2016) contends that rather than center “queer theory” in Africa, we should center how “Africa” rearticulates queer theory. Neville Hoad (2007) and Dagmawi Woubshet (2010), who privilege African perspectives in their work, describe how queer African subjects can enliven U.S. queer studies. Queerly ambivalent is an exploration of how “Africa” rearticulates queer theory by emphasizing multiplicity and noncategorical thinking. This is a profound move toward decolonization where the emphasis on the colonial difference in queer theorizing refuses to be named and subsumed under the umbrella of faux universalism. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. How does non-Western theorizing of queerness help us further explore queer of color critique?

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2. What is “queerly ambivalent” and how does it expand the theoretical contours of queer of color critique? 3. How does the Sasso concept of “classy” resist and decenter Western cultural norms around queer visibility and coming out? 4. What does the author mean by using non-Western queer theorizing as a way of expanding queer intercultural communication? 5. What are the implications of “queerly ambivalent” for researchers who study sexuality in non-Western settings? KEY WORDS • • • • •

Queer African Postcolonial Theory Ambivalence Anti-LGBT Violence Intersectionality REFERENCES

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Eguchi, S. (2015). Queer intercultural relationality: An autoethnography of Asian–Black (dis)connections in White gay America. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 8(1), 27–43. Eguchi, S., & Asante, G. (2016). Disidentifications revisited: Queer(y)ing intercultural communication theory. Communication Theory, 26(2), 171–189. Ekine, S., & Abbas, H. (2013). Queer African reader. Nairobi, Kenya: Pambazuka Press. Eng, D. L. (2010). The feeling of kinship: Queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Eng, D. L., Halberstam, J., & Muñoz, J. E. (2005). Introduction: What’s queer about queer studies now? Social Text, 23(3–4), 1–17. Epprecht, M. (1998). The “unsaying” of indigenous homosexuality in Zimbabwe: Mapping a blindspot in an African masculinity. Journal of Southern African Studies, 24(4), 631–651. Epprecht, M. (2008). Heterosexual Africa? The history of an idea from the Age of Exploration to the age of AIDS. Athens: Ohio University Press. Ferguson, R. A. (2004). Aberrations in Black: Toward a queer of color critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Halberstam, J. (2005). In a queer time and place: Transgender bodies, subcultural lives. New York: New York University Press. Hawley, J. C. (2001). Postcolonial and queer theories: Intersections and essays (Contributions to the study of world literature, no. 101). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hoad, N. W. (2007). African intimacies: Race, homosexuality, and globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Johnson, E. P. (2001). “Quare” studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Text and Performance Quarterly, 21(1), 1–25. Jungar, K., & Peltonen, S. (2017). Acts of homonationalism: Mapping Africa in the Swedish media. Sexualities, 20(5–6), 715–737. Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742–759. Macharia, K. (2016). On being area-studied: A litany of complaint. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 22(2), 183–190. Manalansan, M. F., IV. (1995). In the shadows of Stonewall: Examining gay transnational politics and the diasporic dilemma. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2(4), 425–438. Massad, J. A. (2008). Desiring Arabs. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McClintock, A. (2013). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. New York: Routledge. McCune, J. Q., Jr. (2008). “Out” in the club: The down low, hip-hop, and the architexture of Black masculinity. Text and Performance Quarterly, 28(3), 298–314. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Murray, S. O., & Roscoe, W. (1998). Boy-wives and female-husbands: Studies in African homosexualities. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Ndashe, S. (2013). The single story of African’s homophobia is dangerous for LGBT activism. In S. Ekine & H. Abbas (Eds.), Queer African reader (pp. 32–47). Oxford, England: Pambazuka Press. O’Mara, K. (2007). Homophobia and building queer community in urban Ghana. Praxis, 19 (1). Perez, H. (2005). You can have my Brown body and eat it, too! Social Text, 23(3–4), 171–192. Puar, J. K. (2017). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stoler, A. L. (2010). Carnal knowledge and imperial power: Race and the intimate in colonial rule. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history, homonormativity, and disciplinarity. Radical History Review, (100), 145–157.

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Tamale, S. (2011). African sexualities: A reader. Oxford, England: Pambazuka Press. Tettey, W. J. (2016). Homosexuality, moral panic, and politicized homophobia in Ghana: Interrogating discourses of moral entrepreneurship in Ghanaian media. Communication, Culture & Critique, 9(1), 86–106. Thoreson, R. R. (2014). Troubling the waters of a “wave of homophobia”: Political economies of anti-queer animus in sub-Saharan Africa. Sexualities, 17(1–2), 23–42. Woubshet, D. (2010). New world alphabet. Transition, 103, 118–121. Yep, G. A., Lovaas, K. E., & Elia, J. P. (2003). Introduction: Queering communication: Starting the conversation. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas, & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 1–10). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Yue, A. (2008). Same-sex migration in Australia: From interdependency to intimacy. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 14(2–3), 239–262.

Theme 3

Praxis and Social Justice

Chapter Nine

How Queer (of Color) Is Intercultural Communication? Then and There, Jotería the Game as a Praxis of Queerness, Advocacy, and Utopian Aesthetics Robert Gutierrez-Perez and Luis Manuel Andrade

When I, Luis, was growing up, playing the classic, original Lotería game was a family affair. It was often the women—my mamita, abuelita, tías, primas, and my openly queer tío—who considered himself a girl—who would play with us kids. We played on the weekends on the broken-down wooden kitchen table of our one-bedroom apartment. Sometimes it was too hot in our AC-less, cockroach-infested home, so we played in the vecindad’s plaza and other neighborhood women would join. The women connected with us kids because they helped us catch the cards that the dealers called to mark them on our grids, and every so often the adults would catch each other’s eye, communicating telepathically to intentionally let some of the kids win. “Careful not to miss any cards,” the women advised. “Buenas!” we would yell when we won. Playing was a business venture, too, because each game cost five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents, per player, per Lotería card. The classic Lotería transported us away from the mundane existence of living as undocumented citizens in a predominantly undocumented Latinx vecindad. It helped us escape our fears of la migra, Pete Wilson, the Bushes, and the violent men in our casitas. We brought the game from Mexico, so it also transported us back to our ranchos, the smell of chocolate calientito, and the música from Chente, Las Jilguerillas, or Ramon Ayala. And there were snacks—churros, sodas, dulces, tamarindo. Beers. Music. The cards were read fast and slow. Pennies, beans, quarters. It was Latinx. It was Mexican. Was it also queer of color?

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In her parting words as editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (JIIC), Rona Halualani (2016) lamented the lack of submissions on transgender and queer identities, discourses, and problematics. Indeed, in a special dialogue issue within the journal, Bryant Keith Alexander continuously urged the gathered scholars, practitioners, activists, and teachers to consider the gendered/raced/queer sexed-ness of bodies when encountering intercultural interlocutors (Alexander et al., 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). In this same dialogue, Lisa Flores supported Alexander when she asked, “Why on earth would we ever want to dissociate from bodies? Bodies matter. That ‘mattering’ must be understood and unpacked. Or there will be no end to racism, heteronormativity, sexism, violence” (Alexander et al., 2014c, p. 80). Specifically, we are referring to quantitative and qualitative data that note the pervasiveness of White masculinity, segregationist politics of citationality, and the disparity and ongoing underrepresentation of people of color in communication studies journals (Calafell & Moreman, 2009; Chakravartty, Kuo, Grubbs, & McIlwain, 2018). We think that it matters that scholars continually note the lack of certain interlocutors and queer theorizations from their journal pages—we want to understand and unpack this throughout this chapter. Yet we also want to be queer in our writing style and choices. This chapter is divided into three parts; each begins with a personal narrative drawn from the experiences of one of the authors. By inhabiting our social and cultural locations unapologetically, we believe that “the introspective and reflexive practices of autoethnography make possible novel performances of selves for researchers” (Berry, 2016, p. 22). By contrasting the classical Lotería and Antonio Castellanos’s Jotería alongside our own personal narratives, this chapter spotlights the coloniality, racism, heteronormativity, and sexism in the original game; our Chicanx, Latinx, and Mexicanx culture; and the field of intercultural communication, while remaining personal and political in our praxis. This performative stance draws on Conquergood’s (1985) conception of dialogic performance, or a struggle “to bring together different voices, worldviews, value systems, and beliefs so that they can have a conversation with one another” (p. 9). Further, although the images are not included within this analysis, we did utilize the Jotería game cards to sketch out this chapter and to gather and organize our thoughts, because sensory images connect seemingly different experiences and give meaning to this dialogic performance (Anzaldúa, 2009). The everyday labor of making sense of oneself and making sense of oneself to others is what queer of color theorist and Jotería studies scholar Ernesto Javier Martínez (2013) describes as “narratives of intelligibility” that critique social injustice and challenge “long-standing pattern[s] of rendering questions of race, intersectionality, and queer people of color marginal” within theorizing (pp. 15–16). By embracing a dialogic performance, we construct a narrative of

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intelligibility that can be located within autoethnography, yet drawing on cultural studies scholarship in conversation with critical intercultural communication, we contribute a queer of color critique that honors the materiality of our bodies. We matter (Andrade & Gutierrez-Perez, 2017). This chapter is an invitation to a queer of color world that exists and is (un)consciously made alongside the normative, the centered, and the mainstream, and our goal is for you (the reader) to value the work by and for queer people of color from a critical intercultural communication studies lens. In part 1, we answer the question of how queer (of color) intercultural communication research is, through a review of the potentialities that queer of color utopian aesthetics offer our field and our sociopolitical surroundings. In part 2, we describe and analyze Jotería the game to highlight the cultural and transformative dimensions of this game as an intervention or rupture in communicative spaces that challenges cultures of coloniality, racism, cisheteronormativity, and sexism. In part 3, we advocate for the importance of bodies in our intercultural research projects, syllabi, journals, and everyday lives, because this chapter is political as well as personal. Indeed, throughout each part (including the opening of this chapter), we share our own personal experiences playing both the original Lotería and Castellanos’s Jotería 1 as una ofrenda (an offering) to the reader. We offer a queer of color intercultural communication research project that answers the call for a return to the body, an action against dominant logics of who can and cannot generate knowledge, and a queer aesthetic to writing about research that honors our cultural community and communicative practices. PART 1: HOW QUEER (OF COLOR) IS INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION RESEARCH? I, Luis, always felt (still feel) a bit uncomfortable playing the original Lotería game. Fearful, even. When any card dealers called El Negrito, I couldn’t help but think about the racist undertones of the card; the Black man is shown as a minstrel character and infantilized with the -ito at the end of his name. When El Catrin was called, I noticed that its foiled card was La Dama—binary genders showing El Catrin as a pipe smoker in a pants suit and La Dama in a skirt suit carrying flowers in her hand. El Valiente, El Soldado, El Musico, El Borracho, El Apache, and even El Diablito instantly showed me that the world was masculine, aggressive, authoritative. El Mundo showed a man carrying the world! The boys and men frequently shouted, “That’s me!” when these manly cards came up. The only other women cards were the naked La Sirena and La Chalupa. My queer uncle shouted, “That’s me, chulas!” when the women cards came up, but everyone else either laughed at my uncle or stayed quiet.

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In this section, the guiding question is: How queer (of color) is intercultural communication? This necessitates some attendant definitions, theories, or stories of queerness and Jotería. For queerness, we are drawing on the work of José Esteban Muñoz (2009) to describe this term as “always in the horizon” (p. 11) and “not yet here” (p. 1). In describing queerness in terms of utopian aesthetics, Muñoz opens up queerness to the realms of critique through performance and the performative, and ultimately, the cultural. Halualani (2000) notes the important interfaces between cultural studies and intercultural communication studies, so in attempting to create a finer edge to the criticality of intercultural communication research (Ono, 2011), we draw on Muñoz as part of a larger move that embraces a Jotería praxis: a practice and theory that is scholarly yet artistic and motivated from an activist spirit. Jotería is an “identity category, cultural practice, or social process” (HamesGarcía, 2014, p. 139) that “can be considered a critical site of inquiry that centers on nonheteronormative gender and sexuality as related to mestiza/o subjectivities,” including but by no means limited to “Jota, Joto, maricón, xueer, gay, lesbian, bi, [or] trans” experiential locations (Pérez, 2014, p. 143). “Jotería” 2 is an appropriated term that represents a group of people, exemplifies their radical resistance, and embodies myriads of social locations and perspectives (Bañales, 2014; Hames-García, 2014; Pérez, 2014). Further, “Jotería is a term of empowerment; it is intentionally radical, decolonial, 3 and oppositional” (Pérez, 2014, p. 144). It is a realm of study that creates cutting-edge, rigorous scholarship yet is deeply connected and committed to the art world and the activist world (Gutierrez-Perez, 2015; Revilla & Santillana, 2014). Although we argue that intercultural communication is not queer of color yet, there is a potentiality that we want to hold on to throughout this chapter because this is how we play and write and live during these times that Cherríe Moraga (2000) describes as “loving in the war years.” For instance, in a special issue, “Queer Intercultural Communication,” in JIIC, Karma Chávez (2013a) notes how there is a lack of queer theory, including queer of color theory, in the journal’s pieces, yet in writing the introduction, she acknowledges the works that introduced conversations on queer critique into communication studies (see Johnson, 2001; Lee, 2003; Morris, 1998; Yep, Lovaas, & Elia, 2003) and outlines the key interventions of queer and trans studies (see Hames-Garcia, 2011). She notes the importance of queer of color critique, which emerged out of women of color feminisms, and offers key questions with regard to queer identity, intersectional politics, homonormativity and globalization, and the modern-colonial gender system (Chávez, 2013a). This work by Chávez (2013a) gives us hope for the discipline. As Muñoz (2009) explains, “Hope along with its other, fear, are affective structures that can be described as anticipatory” (p. 3). Hope as an axiological function enables an embodied queerness that can gauge when the world isn’t enough, when something is missing, and when an

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interlocutor must not simply be but do action for and toward a future—it is resistive function (Muñoz, 2009, p. 1). This special issue featured work that utilized queer of color theorizing on citizenship, immigration, and social media (Morrissey, 2013); presented the concepts of cisgender, cisprivilege, and cissexism and argued for the inclusion of transgender studies within the field (Johnson, 2013); and focused on the body as a site of analysis, meaning, and knowledge by offering the notion of thick(er) intersectionalities (Yep, 2013). This makes us hopeful. Further, since this special issue, there have been several research articles published within JIIC that address queerness and intercultural communication in nuanced and critical forms (e.g., Abdi & Van Gilder, 2016; Bie & Tang, 2016; Eguchi, 2015; Goltz, Zingsheim, Mastin, & Murphy, 2016; Moreman & Briones, 2018; Huang & Brouwer, 2018; Oh & Wong Lowe, 2017; Willink, Gutierrez-Perez, Shukri, & Stein, 2014). These works center theorizations of queer people of color; analyze the communication practices, norms, values, and beliefs of queer of color interlocutors; and answer the call for more work at the intersection of race, class, nation, gender, sexuality, ability, and more. Muñoz (2009) guides our thinking that “queerness is an identity. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality” (p. 1). Intercultural communication as a field is not very queer, but the works of the above scholars give us hope that intercultural communication can potentially be very queer of color. Why? Because although the hope we imagine is currently intangible given that we navigate intricate modern/colonial gendered structures, there are glimpses of potentiality by those who precede us that (em)power us in the present and those in the future. And though this hope is filled with tension—living in and betwixt the matrixes of colonial power—we find mechanisms, including ephemeral moments, to breathe life into our cultural rituals and games. We cannot always be hopeful about everything, but we can be hopeful in a way that pushes us to write. To make our fields livable. This is the power of queer of color aesthetics that become even more culturally specific via a Latinx queer of color lens. The narratives and flesh(ed) experiences should not be used as data to recenter whiteness or Western belief systems, but for scholars of color looking for a space, this is a bright horizon to continue moving toward. Given this trajectory, the following section offers a thick description and analysis of Jotería, a game based on the popular Mexican/Latinx Lotería, through personal narrative, performative writing, image-making, and scholarly research to argue that a queer Jotería praxis is a productive, decolonial outlet and a resistive potentiality for queer intercultural communication scholars, practitioners, and communities.

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PART 2: THEN AND THERE, OR JUGANDO CON ORGULLO AS A UTOPIAN AESTHETIC We sit around a picnic table under a white shade umbrella that is attached to a pole down the center of the table. It’s summer and we drink cold Modelos. “El Closetero!” “La Vaquerobia!” “El Chacal!” “La Musculoca!” “El Oso!” “El Lobo!” “El Xochipilli!” “El Pasivo!” “La Vestida!” I, Luis, project, as I deal the cards from Antonio Castellanos’s Jotería—not the original Lotería—game for my queer amigxs, my queer tío, and my hija. My tío emphasizes, “That’s me, jotas!” when he hears “La Vestida” or “El Pasivo.” I notice that he radiates felicidad, comfort, and love. We play Gloria Trevi, Thalia, and Monica Naranjo in the background as we eat churros con Tapatio, lime, and lots of salt. We create “Ambiente,” another card in the pile. 4 Growing up, I knew that my tío was not like El Catrin, El Valiente, or El Apache. He was another beautiful being. More like El Xochipilli and La Vestida; he hid his “Tacones,” “Peluca,” and acrylic “Melones.” And his friends were more like “La Vaquerobia” when they went to las tardeadas in the Mexican cowboy clubs or “La Musculoca” because they loved going to the gym to find hombres. I loved my tío and his friends despite my homophobic grandpa’s violence against them. I identified with them, and now we laugh as we see ourselves in the Jotería cards.

In this section, we offer a thick description and analysis of Jotería to highlight the value of work by and for queer people of color from an intercultural communication studies lens. With 54 character cards, Jotería is based on the popular game Lotería, which is similar to bingo. However, unlike bingo, instead of letters and numbers, a person’s playing board is a four-by-four matrix on which the person places black beans and/or pinto beans (included in the box) to mark what was called throughout the game. Within this matrix, there are a variety of possible cards shown (some already mentioned in the narratives from previous sections). From El Matrimonio to El Lobo to El Xochipilli, Jotería moves from current public policy and LGBTQ politics (in the United States and Mexico) to slang found within LGBTQ Latinx and Chicanx culture to ancient Aztec/Mexica deities and mythology. For the remainder of part 2, we describe various character cards, information on the terminology of several cards, and the history of the character cards to argue that this cultural artifact functions as a concrete utopia for Jotería. We argue that queerness as exemplified by Jotería is “a temporal arrangement in which the past is a field of possibility in which subjects can act in the present in the service of a new futurity” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 16). In other words, this cultural artifact functions as a communicative intervention into homophobic, cissexist, racist, classist, and sexist systems of control, and through its pedagogical function and through art, the new game is reimagined into a space where the Jotería community and its members are valued, heard, and made visible as an

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integrative part of society and culture—a utopic space created through communication across difference. Antonio Castellanos’s Jotería character cards serve a pedagogical function as they feature terminology from the ever-shifting and fluid dynamics of being Latinx queers and jotxs. The game replaced many of the cards from the original Lotería with newly imagined characters that shift, morph, and challenge the masculinity in the classic Lotería. For example, El Chacal, a card that shows a muscular-looking person, refers to a masculine-acting queer man that may often engage in consensual queer sex on the DL, 5 whereas El Xochipilli refers to the Aztec God(dess) of flowers and sexuality to signify an openly queer person. These two variations of the Latinx queer are not necessarily opposites, though they highlight the range of shifting Latinx queer identity. For instance, El Pasivo refers to the oft-stereotyped “bottom” queer man, who is performatively distinct from a “top,” though scholars have noted that the binary is reductionist and does not account for versatile, shifting sexual preferences (Johnson, 2001). Two other cards, El Chico Trans and La Chica Trans, depict a person with soccer shorts and a ball and a person wearing a sparkly dress, respectively, to illustrate the living, breathing existence of trans members in our community. The game includes trans persons and jotas, as is the case of the card depicting La Marimacha, or what is traditionally known as a woman who may be sexually attracted to women, characteristically macha, or masculine, and defiant of the femininity ascribed to women in conservative Latinx culture. The illustration of diverse genders and sexual differentiations signifies redefinitions—newly envisioned visions in game aesthetics—of conservative Latinidad. As a game, Jotería serves a pedagogical function, which Eddy Francisco Alvarez (2014) describes as a Jotería pedagogy that is “challenging but transformative, requiring innovative and brave efforts to facilitate nonhierarchical, vulnerable, and critical spaces of learning” (p. 218). Although Alvarez discusses pedagogy in the classroom, this is precisely the innovation that Jotería brings to the everyday. It enacts survival; instills a process of decolonization of the mind, body, and spirit; addresses intersectionality; makes room for diverse perspectives; and validates affective and emotional lives (Alvarez, 2014, p. 218). Further, it enacts a Jotería identity or consciousness that is “rooted in fun, laughter, and radical queer love” (Revilla & Santillana, 2014, p. 174). Providing directions and information in both Spanish and English, there is a translational and pedagogical labor undertaken through Jotería. As the box states, “[Jotería] is more than a game, it is a source of education on our community. [Jotería] provides information on lingo, terms, and history, from pre-colonial to modern time.” As a culture that is often violently silenced and erased from history, popular/mainstream culture, and political power, Jotería offers a way into a queer culture that exists alongside of but never replaces mainstream culture. For instance, El Closetero refers to the queer man that

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frequently prefers to be in the closet due to fears of cultural or familial rejection, similar to the preferences of El Chacal. La Vestida refers to the amorphous identity of a drag queen, though, like Luis’s queer tío, a “vestida” may be a cross-dresser, trans woman, or queer who prefers to wear women’s clothing. Further, this pedagogical function/labor is purposefully meant to transform spaces and places because Castellanos chose to mix art, pictures of real Jotx bodies, and symbols. For example, La Bandera and El Condón represent a gay flag and a condom, which are symbols of objects that are commonly used by Jotxs and are laden with political symbology, whereas photographs of actual Jotería models, such as with El Chacal (a masculine, muscular, working-class male), La Fem (a feminine queer), and La Muscaloca (a feminine muscular man), represent bodies that the cards seek to represent. Behind each tabla, or game matrix, there is information on some of the cards, including history and definitions of the terms, photographer/illustrator credit, and the Instagram account of the model utilized in the card. By showcasing actual bodies of actual jotxs on the character cards, Castellanos highlights the materiality of the words/terms/lingo on the cards and makes it clear that this game is embodied in the everyday lives of those playing Jotería (i.e., the identity, culture, social process). As players mark their grids, they remember and repopulate the world with performances and bodies that are sometimes (in)visible in the public and in private. These cards cannot be read as precise, boxed identities, but they offer glimpses of different ranges of Latinx queer genders and sexualities, including their variant performative markers, cues, and traits. Interestingly, we, queers, see ourselves in the cards—a game of interpolation between the signs, the aesthetics, and our daily performances, behaviors, and identities (Conquergood, 2013). As Muñoz (2009) noted, Often we can glimpse the worlds proposed and promised by queerness in the realm of the aesthetic. The aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schedules of a forward-dawning futurity. Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness. (p. 1)

Like the game, the trajectory of Jotería philosophy and scholarship sheds light on the myriad ways that “voices and images materialize in multiple forms: cultural production, history, politics, and the everyday lives of individuals” (Pérez, 2014, p. 145). The newly imagined game provides a linkage between artistry and history, politics, and personal narrative. Like Pérez (2014), we believe that “we have much to learn from our Jotería—wherever they may be, and however they may express themselves” (p. 145). Therefore, the “challenge to Jotería studies scholars is to find them, bear witness to

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them, and study them. . . . Each voice can contribute something important to our unique heritage and to a promising future” (Pérez, 2014, p. 145). As a game, Jotería allows interlocutors to enter a world that exists alongside theirs, yet it is one that many rarely see or understand. As Jotería scholars Revilla and Santillana (2014) explain, “Homophobia, patriarchy, and white supremacy are deeply embedded in our communities; consequently, there is a lack of literature that speaks to the collective experiences of Jotería” (p. 170). In essence, we argue that Jotería is an example of what Muñoz described as a concrete utopia. He writes, “Concrete utopias are relational to historically situated struggles, a collectivity that is actualized or potential. In our everyday life abstract utopias are akin to banal optimism” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 3). For example, the highly criticized yet nonetheless mainstream “It Gets Better” campaign is an abstract utopia. Given the lack of knowledge on Jotería (Pérez, 2014), we note how “concrete utopias are the realm of educated hope,” and although concrete utopias “can also be daydream-like” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 3), similar to when we play Jotería, the point is that the game is a “rejection of a here and now and an insistence on the potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 1). Through the intercultural interactions and play of the game, “queerness exists . . . as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. . . . Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 1). However, as Chávez (2013b) suggests, hope is not always promising because, in the case of many migrant groups, including students, the promise of tomorrow does not always equate to structural, material changes in the present. Chávez (2013b), then, suggests that cultural change must include present- and future-oriented movement, mobilization, and underlying cultural change, including linguistic, phenomenal, psychic, and material transformation, as we suggest is started in the everyday leisure and specificity of Jotería the game. We are realistic, though. The game will not bring the end to the modern/colonial gendered system. Jotería is merely a starting point that provides (re)significations of gender and jotxs through creative aesthetics. The more we see the new cards, the more we realize that our gender matrixes and identities shift and morph. Aesthetics are performative, unpredictable, (re)imaginable. It is these decolonial moves and pedagogy that resignify homophobic discourses, histories, and communication (Bañales, 2014; Gutierrez-Perez, 2015). We use the term “decolonizing to mean the process of undoing the logic of colonization in its present form, described by many scholars as coloniality. Coloniality is constitutive of modernity, and they exist simultaneously” (Bañales, 2014, p. 156). In the final section, we further outline the political labor undertaken by Jotería the game and Jotería the identity, culture, and social process and connect these processes to the project of intercultural communication scholarship.

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PART 3: POLITICS OF THE BORDERLANDS AS DANGEROUS CULTURAL WORK As we play, we laugh and joke about the cards, especially because they reveal what our Jotx community has been, can be, and where we may potentially evolve. Beyond the laughter, several cards show the evolution of our community and the directions and flights we may take. We have fought for our “Salud Sexual” because politicians have not cared about the sexual and reproductive rights and well-being of our community. Even when White queers created a movement, my queer Mexican and undocumented neighbors could not protest on the streets because of their fears of deportation. They couldn’t protest for their health. We have come to recognize the struggles of our trans familiares, including “La Transformación” they sometimes choose. We have fought to create “Igualdad,” queer “Matrimonio,” and “El Amor.” “Buenas!” my tío yells. We raise “La Bandera,” the multicolored flag when we parade at Pride, in marches for immigrant rights, and when Trump became elected. Why? Because beyond our Latinx culture, the flag has represented coalitional, intersectional conexiones with our fellow queers.

Playing Jotería is political. It is a communal activity in jotx communities and beyond that intentionally replaces the original Lotería with Castellanos’s new game. In fact, playing Jotería the identity is political, and we enjoy the conflation, (mis)communications, and play between the name of the game and the co-opted term utilized to describe a sociocultural process, an identity category, and an area of scholarship. This area of scholarship traces its genealogy and influences from Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x studies, Chicana feminisms, women of color feminisms, and U.S. third-world feminisms (Alvarez, 2014; Bañales, 2014; Hames-García, 2014). Bañales (2014) explains that “Jotería as political project values and creates new forms of knowledge, particularly those coming from below and from ourselves, our various families, communities, ancestors, and histories” (p. 160). Beyond the cards that literally signify transformations in marriage, politics, equality, and justice, we (those who inhabit the reality that the cards symbolize and honor) stab our culture(s) in the back when we name ourselves names that were so often derogatory (see Gutierrez-Perez & Andrade, 2018)—palabras (words) used to silence our tongues; inject shame, fear, and guilt into our souls; and declare us monsters worthy of death and erasure from public memory and popular culture. These problematics emerge out of political and social discourses and the communicative processes of identity and culture (see Carrillo Rowe, 2008; Gutierrez-Perez, 2017). Playing on a kitchen table, playing Jotería, captures the daily and iterative performances that advocating for social justice demands of Jotería communities.

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And though the game has not become mainstream, Jotería and the mass production of it are sites of hope. As Muñoz (2009) stated, “Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present” (p. 1). Contrasting the original Lotería and Castellanos’s Jotería is an intervention to recognize the endless queer of color potentialities in the newly imagined game but also as an intervention within our field. The fact is that intercultural communication is not very queer, but it could potentially be queer of color. Playing Jotería the game socially constructs a concrete utopia for the players, and although the intercultural communication illuminated by the game is fraught with danger and risks, there is an anticipatory potentiality that opens up affective contours that include and can contain hope (Muñoz, 2009). We specifically utilize the term “potentiality” because “unlike possibility, a thing that simply might happen, a potentiality is a certain mode of nonbeing that is eminent, a thing that is present but not actually existing in the present tense” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 9). We have some hope for intercultural communication because we are Jotería scholars. Jotería studies in intercultural communication are political and personal because “who [we are] and where [we come] from is vital to understanding why [our] research is more than an academic project and is indeed a tool for survival and resistance” (Revilla & Santillana, 2014, p. 170). In this last section, we advocate for a queer of color and performative turn to the way we think about communication and culture in our ever-growing transnational and globalizing world. These areas can contribute to understandings of hybridity and diaspora, the (post)colonial condition, transnationalism, decoloniality, identity and identity construction, resistance and agency, and intersectional, embodied knowledge. CONCLUSION: “WE ARE NOT QUEER YET, BUT WE HAVE HOPE” Following an understanding of intercultural communication from a critical approach (Halualani & Nakayama, 2010), we, the authors, find ourselves rooted in the politics of the fringes (Collier, Hegde, Lee, Nakayama, & Yep, 2001) and the reality of living in the borderlands (Anzaldúa, 2000, 2009, 2012, 2015; Calafell & Moreman, 2010; Conquergood, 2013; Moreman & Calafell, 2008). We understand intercultural communication as dangerous work (Gutierrez-Perez, 2017; Madison, 2009) and in fruitful relationship with cultural studies (Halualani, 2000). “Jotería are mestiza/os who share a long history of discrimination and persecution based on perceived gender and sexual transgressions,” yet “we also share a rich cultural heritage, filled with triumphs, heroes, and legends, that is often occluded or excluded from dominant discourses and narratives” (Pérez, 2014, p. 144). How can our scholar-

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ship, art, and activism be enriched by including voices from the margins? Jotería the game and Jotería studies are but a few examples of the reflexivity and agency we may engage in to rethink our scholarly politics. We are not queer yet, but we have hope. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What is the potentiality of utopian aesthetics for a decolonial future? What other cultural artifacts or practices offer this form of queer of color critique? How can queer of color utopian aesthetics transform material realities (society, politics, etc.)? 2. What is queer of color critique and how does this chapter (mis)align with the definition of this theoretical/methodological location? 3. How does the new Jotería game provide an opportunity to question the field of intercultural communication and the authors’ cultural logics? KEY WORDS • • • • •

Queerness Utopian Aesthetics Critical Intercultural Communication Jotería Advocacy NOTES

1. Throughout the chapter we use Jotería to refer to the complex communities and members of Latinx queer groups, whereas the italicized Jotería refers to Castellanos’s newly imagined game. 2. When referring to a people, Pérez (2014) writes that the term should be capitalized, and this was a decision made at the planning meeting for the 2012 Association of Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship. 3. To understand the significance of Jotería to the decolonial political agenda of Jotería arts, activism, and scholarship, it is generative to “understand decolonization” as a confrontation with “social hierarchies—like those based on racial, class, gender, sexual, and age differences—that were reinforced by European modernity as it enslaved, colonized, and disappeared populations in the Americas and around the world” (Bañales, 2014, p. 159). 4. Andrade and Gutierrez-Perez (2017) previously argued that queers of color and jotxs frequently sing, dance, and reflect on the lyrics of ballads by powerful women singers in Mexican and Spanish music genres, such as cumbia, salsa, reggaeton, and rancheras, as forms of empowerment and resistance to gendered-colonial violence. 5. “DL” is an abbreviation that stands for “down low,” meaning a gay man or homosexual behavior that is engaged in secretly or kept secret.

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Eguchi, S. (2015). Queer intercultural relationality: An autoethnography of Asian–Black (dis)connections in White gay America. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 8(1), 27–43. Goltz, D. B., Zingsheim, J., Mastin, T., & Murphy, A. G. (2016). Discursive negotiations of Kenyan LGBTI identities: Cautions in cultural humility. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(2), 104–121. Gutierrez-Perez, R. M. (2015). Disruptive ambiguities: The potentiality of Jotería critique in communication studies. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research, 14, 89–99. Gutierrez-Perez, R. M. (2017). Bridging performances of auto/ethnography and queer bodies of color to advocacy and civic engagement. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 4(1), 148–156. Gutierrez-Perez, R. M., & Andrade, L. M. (2018). Queer of color worldmaking: in the rhetorical archive and the embodied repertoire. Text and Performance Quarterly, 38(1–2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2018.1435130 Halualani, R. T. (2000). Rethinking “ethnicity” as structural–cultural project(s): Notes on the interface between cultural studies and intercultural communication. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 579–602. Halualani, R. T. (2016). Signing off and urging us forward. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(4), 273–274. Halualani, R. T., & Nakayama, T. K. (2010). Critical intercultural communication studies at a crossroads. In T. K. Nakayama and R. T. Halualani (Eds.), The handbook of critical intercultural communication (pp. 1–16). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hames-García, M. (2011). Queer theory revisited. In M. Hames-García & E. J. Martínez (Eds.), Gay Latino studies: A critical reader (pp. 19–45). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hames-García, M. (2014). Jotería studies, or the political is personal. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 39(1), 135–142. Huang, S., & Brouwer, D. C. (2018). Coming out, coming home, coming with: Models of queer sexuality in contemporary China. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 11(2), 97–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2017.1414867 Johnson, E. P. (2001). Quare studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Text and Performance Quarterly, 21(1), 1–25. Johnson, J. (2013). Cisgender privilege, intersectionality, and the criminalization of CeCe McDonald: Why intercultural communication needs transgender studies. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057. 2013.776094 Lee, W. (2003). Kauering queer theory: My autocritography and a race-conscious, womanist, transnational turn. In G. A. Yep, K. E. Lovaas, & J. P. Elia (Eds.), Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (pp. 147–170). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Madison, D. S. (2009). Dangerous ethnography. In N. K. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry and social justice: Toward a politics of hope (pp. 187–197). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2009. Martínez, E. J. (2013). On making sense: Queer race narratives of intelligibility. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Moraga, C. (2000). Loving in the war years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Moreman, S. T., & Briones, S. R. (2018). Deaf queer world-making: A thick intersectional analysis of the mediated cultural body. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 11(3), 216–232. Moreman, S. T., & Calafell, B. M. (2008). Buscando para nuestros hijos: Utilizing La Llorona for cultural critique. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 1(4), 309–326. Morris, C. E., III. (1998). “The responsibilities of the critic”: F. O. Matthiessen’s homosexual palimpsest. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84, 261–282.

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Morrissey, M. E. (2013). A DREAM disrupted: Undocumented migrant youth disidentifications with U.S. citizenship. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 145–162. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Oh, D. C., & Wong Lowe, A. (2017). Spectacles in hybrid Japan: Deconstruction, semiotic excess, and obtuse meanings in Lost in Translation. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 10(2), 153–167. Ono, K. A. (2011). Critical: A finer edge. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8(1), 93–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2011.543332 Pérez, D. E. (2014). Jotería epistemologies: Mapping a research agenda, unearthing a lost heritage, and building “Queer Aztlán.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 39(1), 143–154. Revilla, A. T., & Santillana, J. M. (2014). Jotería identity and consciousness. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 39(1), 167–180. Willink, K. G., Gutierrez-Perez, R., Shukri, S., & Stein, L. (2014). Navigating with the stars: Critical qualitative methodological constellations for critical intercultural communication research. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 7(4), 289–316. Yep, G. A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 118–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2013.777087 Yep, G. A., Lovaas, K. E., & Elia, J. P. (Eds.). (2003). Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press.

Chapter Ten

Queerying Race, Culture, and Sex Examining HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Social Marketing for African American and Latinx Gay and Bisexual Men Andrew Spieldenner and Deion Hawkins

“End the Epidemic” initiatives have emerged in recent years in the HIV field, generally involving scaling up HIV testing and biomedical HIV prevention and treatment (Maulsby et al., 2016). This strategy is based on current public health science: testing to identify all people living with HIV so they can be put into HIV treatment with the goal of having full viral suppression (thereby reducing transmission possibility to nil). Other tools include nonoccupational post-exposure prophylaxis (nPEP) and HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), where an HIV-negative person takes medication in order to prevent HIV acquisition (Maulsby et al., 2016). Combined, these various prongs would reduce the amount of HIV transmission and acquisition within a given population—yet do little to impact the underlying structural conditions that undergird HIV vulnerability (e.g., racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, economic and educational disparities, erratic housing, mental health, and substance use). PrEP has been the center of multiple initiatives to increase uptake particularly among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in the African American and Latinx community (Spieldenner, 2016). For this chapter, we call attention to social marketing and its unique role as a communication device. These campaigns are largely government-sponsored because public health agencies have more resources to develop social marketing campaigns and distribute them across media platforms. We use queer intercultural communication as a means of understanding how these communicative partners (the government health agency and the targeted pop195

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ulation) engage/discipline each other. Social marketing campaigns actively participate in the public sphere and act discursively to ratify, develop, or resist ideas about the public health issue or the target population (Dutta & De Souza, 2008; Spieldenner & Castro, 2010; Spieldenner, 2016). The health campaigns follow a “cultural competence” or “multicultural” approach to social marketing that can limit depictions of racial/ethnic minority gay and bisexual men. We assert queer intercultural communication as a more productive means of understanding and exploring racial/ethnic minority gay and bisexual men in social marketing campaigns. A QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION APPROACH We use queer intercultural communication as a theoretical approach to analyze HIV public health campaigns because of its attention to the intersections of race, nationality, sexuality, gender, and social norms. While queer theory comes out of gay and lesbian studies, it has advanced beyond the study of sexuality (Chávez, 2013b). Browne and Nash (2016) note that “‘queer research’ can be any form of research positioned within conceptual frameworks that highlight the instability of taken-for-granted meanings and resulting power relations” (p. 4). Queer intercultural communication emerges from the intersections of queer studies and intercultural communication. Whereas intercultural communication has been integral in our discipline in understanding how culture frames communicative practices, it has been less successful in joining with notions of sexuality, sex, and the body—and the ways that sexual communities develop cultural communication practices (Aiello et al., 2013; Eguchi & Asante, 2016). Similarly, queer theory’s focus on sexuality and its disruptions can lead to limited views of culture (Chávez, 2013a; Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Eng, 2010). By developing a queer intercultural communication lens, we insist that communication and communities are explicitly political and must be considered within the multiple domains of power being employed and deployed in communication (Aiello et al., 2013; Eguchi & Asante, 2016). Chávez (2013b) points to the following commonalities among queer intercultural communication: “attentiveness to intersectional analysis, the importance of political activism to queer worldmaking, and the politics of language and translation” (p. 90). While there is a focus on sexuality, culture, race, and gender, there is also an awareness of the impact of globalization as well as the history of colonialism and imperialism. Critical awareness, praxis, and history are integral to queer intercultural communication. We want to focus on queer intercultural communication in this chapter in three interlocking ways: understanding processes of naming, expanding ways of knowing,

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and recognizing community identifications. In addition, we connect queer intercultural communication to the history of queer of color critique. The process of naming is tightly connected with identity in intercultural communication and queer theory. Naming becomes the first way of understanding the community, the interlocutors, and the cultural contexts of the communication. Who gets to identify and how the naming happens are political constructions. For example, Calafell (2015) describes a department meeting on diversity where her mentor “mischaracterized and trivialized my research. As a queer Chicana feminist performance scholar my work is about performance and everyday life. It is about resistance, agency, and performance” (p. 17). Even as Calafell acknowledges the harm of the (mis)naming of her/her research in this space, Calafell chooses to name herself and her position in relationship to power structures in academia. While she could have stayed with the wounding, Calafell resists in her own writing, demonstrating the agency in her work. Power is a key element to naming. Often queer people of color are not able to name themselves through community media and narratives (Chávez, 2013a; Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Yep, 2013). Hemphill (1991) describes his search for a Black gay identity amid literature, media, history, and academia and finding “from the perspective of a black nationalist sensibility . . . that this . . . most often condemns homosexuality, ridicules gays, lesbians, dykes, faggots, bulldaggers, and homos, and positions homosexuality as a major threat to the black family and black masculinity” (p. xxiii). When Hemphill uncovers Black gay men in Black nationalist writing and art, he sees caricatures of people or the individuals framed as a menace. Similarly, within the White LGBTQ community, people of color are often depicted in one-dimensional or limited ways—whether as objects of desire or stereotypes (Chávez, 2013a; Eng, 2010). In this way, queers of color often have to struggle with multiple forms of naming and (mis)naming by multiple authors—whether within the (heterosexual) community of color or the White LGBTQ community (Aiello et al., 2013; Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Namaste et al., 2012). Queer intercultural communication research embraces multiple kinds of evidence, including performance and autoethnography (Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Johnson, 2001). Other social science approaches privilege empirical data, and ofttimes primarily quantitative data. Similar to the process of naming, this is about identifying what counts as proof, whose truth is centered, and querying how we come to know about the world. Anzaldúa (1987) notes, “We’re supposed to ignore, forget, kill those fleeting images of the soul’s presence and of the spirit’s presence. We’ve been taught that the spirit is outside our bodies or above our heads somewhere up in the sky with God” (p. 36). Anzaldúa is talking about the ways that knowledge is respected, that ways of knowing are acknowledged. In this particular case, she describes

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how moments of spirituality are not recorded, how institutionalized religion attempts to silence these memories. Queer intercultural communication scholars have to consider how lived experiences with colonialism, racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia present sets of embodied knowledges. Knowledge bases reveal social values about communities and people. In the case of groups that have been and continue to be marginalized in society, empirical data often serves to support structural violence and occlude what is known/knowable about these groups (Namaste et al., 2012). In discussing depictions of African American sexuality, Snorton (2014) points out “a process and paradigm that signals a gap in the critical literature of sexuality studies as well as an absence of epistemological frameworks that can address the complexity of black sexual expression” (p. 93). His analysis of the “down low” as a closet in African American sexuality reveals the limits of both critical sexuality studies and public health epidemiology in understanding “black sexual expression.” Queer intercultural communication must explore communities and their knowledge bases in critical, expansive, and imaginative ways. Queer intercultural communication provides a framework to explicitly address these forms of social oppression. It does not assume that communication is neutral or that communicative partners are always equal in terms of resources and power. In her study of coalition work between LGBTQ and immigrant-rights groups, Chávez (2013a) points to “the need for an analysis of intermeshing and interlocking oppression to improve people’s worlds and the tactical strategies people are already deploying to achieve such ends” (p. 149). By understanding the “interlocking oppression” from multiple points of view, researchers are better able to document, critique, and intervene in communication. While self-identification is integral to queer intercultural communication, the larger community with which one identifies or is placed are part of this construction of self. Calafell describes how the same actions are read differently in the same context due to discourses built around the community identity: I have witnessed some of my white colleagues scream at students, yet they go unnoticed or unmarked. They are not monsters. They are having a bad day. I however, am always on guard because as an assertive woman of color who knows the power of my voice, I am already pathologized and viewed as angry before I even speak. (Calafell, 2015, p. 23)

Individuals do not come into communication encounters without a connection to a larger community. In Calafell’s scenario, White colleagues are excused for their behavior because they are allotted the emotional space of

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“having a bad day,” but an assertive woman of color will always be “pathologized” and “angry.” Sometimes the individual chooses a community connection and makes it explicit. In these cases, consider the various communities invoked wearing a favored sports team’s insignia, a Make America Great Again cap, an LGBT Pride flag, or Black Lives Matter paraphernalia. In other cases, individuals are ascribed a community identity, regardless of individual intent. In the United States, race is often the proxy for community background. In this way, all Black individuals become somehow connected to African Americans in history, discourse, and social structure—even if the individuals are Black immigrants, mixed-race, Afro-Latinx, or interracially adopted. Some people are resistant to this race proxy, but race is a pervasive identifier in the United States (Moon & Nakayama, 2005). These community ties are a dialectic where individuals have some—but not total—control over their community identifications. This tension has emerged, for instance, among Latinx activists in the HIV epidemic. Latinx activists are aware of their various connections to Latinx, LGBT, and HIV communities. Within each community, the Latinx activists in one ethnography discuss ways they are excluded or included and ways to navigate the differences found in the community. Ramirez-Valles (2011) notes, “After skin color, language is the most salient indicator of group membership. If someone is perceived as Latino, he is expected to speak Spanish. If he does not, he is not a ‘real’ Latino” (p. 65). There are communicative practices that mark one as part of or excluded from community membership. These concepts—naming, expanding knowledge bases, and community identifications—in queer intercultural communication provide a critical lens to engage communication phenomena for understanding the frictions of sexuality and the body embedded in the nuance of culture. We utilize queer intercultural communication as a framework to read the ways that African American and Latinx gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men are created, depicted, disciplined, and documented in HIV social marketing. We are particularly interested in the heavy emphasis on PrEP in the U.S. public health system. HIV IMPACT ON AFRICAN AMERICAN AND LATINX GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN In the United States, African Americans and Latinxs bear a disproportionate amount of HIV burden. While they make up only 12% of the population, African Americans comprise 43% of the HIV epidemic in the United States (CDC, 2018a). Latinxs are 18% of the U.S. population but accounted for 24% of new HIV diagnoses in 2015 (CDC, 2018b). In 2014, gay and bisexual

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men accounted for an estimated 70% of new HIV diagnoses in the United States, with nearly half of those among African Americans (CDC, 2017). In 2014, Latinx gay and bisexual men had a 14% increase in new HIV diagnoses over the previous year (CDC, 2017). In addition, African Americans and Latinxs living with HIV benefit less from HIV treatment and still have higher HIV-related mortality than White counterparts (CDC, 2016). Public health initiatives focused on HIV and African Americans and Latinxs have ramped up in the past two decades. HIV social marketing targeting African Americans in general and African American gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) have existed since the earliest days of the epidemic in the United States. These ads have ranged in messages about HIV, prevention, treatment, intimate partner relationships, and the African American community. Further, these have often positioned African Americans as either part of a “Black only” world or one that is multiracial (especially a multicultural gay world). When they do focus on Black gay and bisexual men, these HIV messages have focused on educational and fearbased messaging, often crafting a discourse that treats African American gay and bisexual men as vectors of disease or involved in illicit activities (Spieldenner & Castro, 2010). For Latinx gay and bisexual men, there have been fewer ads—with the vast majority of government social marketing in HIV using ads originally designed for African American audiences and translating the campaign to Spanish. PREP PrEP has been approved since 2012 as a means of interrupting HIV transmission in the United States. PrEP is actually an antiretroviral (ARV) medication used in HIV treatment. With HIV-negative individuals, PrEP has a protective factor, reducing the likelihood of acquiring HIV by more than 90% (CDC, 2018c). As a medication, PrEP is often depicted as more reliable than other prevention methods (e.g., condom use, serosorting) that rely on individual choices in sex. The CDC, health departments, and HIV organizations have pushed PrEP to the gay community, with White gay men having significantly higher uptake of PrEP than any other group (Snowden, Chen, McFarland, & Raymond, 2017). Since African American and Latinx gay and bisexual men have higher rates of HIV and are less likely to be virally suppressed than White counterparts, public health agencies have devoted considerable resources to social marketing campaigns intended to increase PrEP uptake among these groups. PrEP enters the HIV field as a means of reducing HIV transmission rates, particularly among “vulnerable” populations like African American and Latinx gay and bisexual men. Holloway (2011) reminds us that “populations

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labeled as ‘vulnerable’ are patients whose medical care has been attached to identity” (p. 111). This has particular impact with PrEP as African American and Latinx gay and bisexual men remain disproportionately impacted by the HIV epidemic. These campaigns enter a public discourse that connects African American and Latinx gay and bisexual men with key concepts in HIV—vulnerable, at-risk, HIV negative—while flattening nuances of identity, including ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and HIV seroconversion. PrEP discourse within the community is amplified and actively engaged with this social marketing, such as PrEP being about a large number of sex partners or “raw” sex, connoting irresponsibility and invoking slut shaming (Spieldenner, 2016; Yep, Lovaas, & Pagonis, 2002). SOCIAL MARKETING Social marketing, the application of marketing techniques to promote beneficial behavior change, has become a popular tool of health promotion (Ramirez, Rios, Valdez, Estrada, & Ruiz, 2017). Government agencies, including the CDC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and several nonprofit organizations have used social marketing to promote preventive health behaviors (i.e., increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) (Grier & Bryant, 2005). This widespread adoption of social marketing in public health has yielded success. For example, the “Truth” antismoking campaigns marketed toward sensationseeking teenagers prevented nearly half a million teenagers from initiating smoking (Farrelly, Nonnemaker, Davis, & Hussin, 2009). When discussing sexual health, the promotion of condom use internationally is heralded as one of the first successful applications of social marketing techniques (Grier & Bryant, 2005). Now agencies involved in HIV advocacy often turn to social marketing as a way to decrease HIV transmission (Pedrana et al., 2012). Social marketing relies on two things: (1) audience segmentation and (2) the marketing mix. Audience Segmentation Social marketers reject the notion that all products can be promoted to all people. Instead, proper social marketing requires one to divide individuals into population segments or subgroups. Public health organizations usually isolate groups based on demographic variables such as age, ethnicity, and race (Grier & Bryant, 2005). However, social marketing digs deeper and pushes for audience segmentation based on current behavior, future behavioral intentions, readiness to change, and product loyalty (Grier & Bryant, 2005). For example, a public health campaign may be targeted to Black MSM at large, but a social marketing campaign may encourage one to seg-

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ment the community and target Black MSM who are more likely to use condoms (behavioral intentions) or are currently engaging in persistent condomless sex (current behavior). To some, segmenting an audience inherently requires the process of naming, an aspect of queer intercultural communication. For example, previous HIV reduction campaigns, like the CDC’s “Testing Makes Us Stronger,” were targeted toward Black MSM (Habarta et al., 2017). The CDC explicitly named their target audience based on a demographic variable but did not segment based on behavior or readiness to change. In doing so, the campaign treated Black MSM as a monolithic group, assuming the majority of Black MSM would have similar reactions to the campaign. Even as the CDC named their target, the ads did not necessarily “read” or “identify” with the target population they professed to reach (Spieldenner & Castro, 2010). Compared to other campaigns, social marketers dedicate more resources and energy to the segmentation process but should engage in this practice cautiously. Improperly naming an audience segment inherently skews the understanding of the community and, therefore, could lead to a campaign’s failure or, worse, the boomerang effect. For instance, currently, more than half of Black/African American transgender women are living with HIV (CDC, 2018a). Despite this, current CDC HIV reduction measures misname this demographic and treat them as MSM; in turn, HIV rates continue to rise for Black transwomen (Koblin et al., 2017). Thus, we argue proper naming is a crucial aspect of audience segmentation, as the identification of ideal segments influences the development and implementation of the marketing mix. Marketing Mix Drawing from the field of advertising, social marketing relies on the marketing mix known as the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion (Grier & Bryant, 2005). The four Ps are crucial elements of social marketing as they help us understand not only how a message is constructed but also why certain message channels are ideal for segments. Product In social marketing, product refers to the set of benefits associated with the desired behavior (Grier & Bryant, 2005). Lee & Kotler (2016) identify two different components: (1) the core product, or gained benefits of an enacted behavior; and (2) the actual product, desired behavior. Let’s assume a social marketer wanted to increase physical activity for individuals in an urban community; jogging may be the actual product, whereas increased life expectancy and lower blood pressure would be core products. It is important to note that the product must be an enacted behavior; therefore, promotional materials (i.e., pamphlets, billboards, posters, advertisements, etc.) are not

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products; instead, they should be viewed as resources that increase the adoption of the desired behavior. The perception of actual products is often influenced by two tenets of queer intercultural communication: expanding knowledge and community identifications. First, expanding ways of knowledge relates to what information we may deem factual and how we gather these facts. For some, cultural norms and the narratives associated with these norms serve as knowledge (facts). For instance, any campaign that desires to increase prescription adherence for African American men receiving care would first need to combat the Tuskegee stigma. Because of the famous Tuskegee syphilis experiment, to many African Americans, medical care is synonymous with exploitation and mistrust; in other words, this community uses history as a means to establish fact and “knows” doctors prey on the Black body (Alsan & Wanamaker, 2017). Groce & Trasi (2004) found that virgin cleansing myths ran rampant in Sub-Saharan Africa; therefore, campaigns had to not only push for condoms but also, from the beginning, disprove this “knowledge.” Second, one’s culture impacts one’s perception of products; therefore, recognizing community identification plays an integral role in social marketing. Individuals who identify as African American are less likely to be concerned about skin cancer, and as a result, are significantly less likely to engage in sun-protective behaviors (Tsai, Frank, & Bordeaux, 2018). With this knowledge, social marketers would need to situate products like sunscreen or skin examinations within the cultural beliefs and contexts of those who identify as African American. Similarly, individuals who identify as Appalachian are less likely to recognize themselves as obese and are less confident in their abilities to prevent obesity (Rice et al., 2018). For those who view obesity as an inevitable part of life or do not perceive themselves as overweight, the product of exercise would be less appealing. Price According to Lee & Kotler (2016), price does not always refer to monetary value; instead it refers to the cost (sacrifice) associated with a campaign’s desired behavior. This could include intangible costs such as lack of pleasure or loss of time as well as tangible monetary costs. For instance, a social marketing campaign may desire to increase consumption of organic vegetables, but to be successful, the campaign must consider that organic vegetables are not only more expensive but also take more time to locate if they are not available in one’s regular grocery store. A behavior’s “price” should always be analyzed from the consumer’s point of view, and typically, consumers only enact a desired behavior if the benefits outweigh the costs (Grier & Bryant, 2005).

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Place Place refers to the location of the desired behavior, known as action outlets; action outlets require one to understand where and when the target market will perform the desired behavior (Lee & Kotler, 2016). Grier & Bryant (2005) write, “Place includes the actual physical location of outlets, operating hours, site attractiveness and accessibility” (p. 323). As a point of clarification, place does not refer to the placement of promotional materials. Let’s continue our example from above and assume a campaign’s desired behavior is the increased consumption of organic vegetables. Billboards across the city would consist of materials designed to increase the likelihood of the behavior. On the other hand, acknowledging place would require one to understand where organic vegetables are sold and would accommodate for any transportation barriers. It is important to note that for some demographics, place and price are inherently intertwined. In food deserts, individuals engage in unhealthy eating behaviors not by choice but out of necessity (Wood & Thomas, 2017). In some urban areas, there is a high concentration of fast-food restaurants while fresh food is virtually nonexistent; the dearth of fresh produce (lack of place) increases the time it takes to secure healthy foods (cost). Promotion Promotion is often the most visible aspect of a social marketing campaign. Unfortunately, due to their popularity and visibility, promotional materials are often assumed to be entire campaigns. However, adequate promotion asks, What can be done to ensure consumers “buy the product”? Promotion casts a wide net but largely focuses on persuasive communication. Grier and Bryant (2005) note that promotion includes drafting effective messages and identifying appropriate communication channels. Moreover, the use of TV/ radio advertisements; print media, including pamphlets and billboards; Tshirts; special events; celebrity endorsements; and face-to-face selling are all examples of social marketing promotion (Grier & Bryant, 2005). Proper audience segmentation determines how, when, and where promotion occurs. For example, Black Twitter is a growing phenomenon in the Black gay community. It functions as social support, a source of information and ongoing discourse. In other words, Black Twitter becomes a way of knowing and establishing community. With this knowledge, social marketers could utilize Twitter as health messaging/promotion. *** Our chapter explores how and in what ways queer intercultural theory can be used to better understand social marketing of marginalized populations. Through a case study, we will examine how African American and Latinx gay, bisexuals, and other men who have sex with men are presumed similar

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in terms of sexual practices, living conditions, aspirations, and community engagement in the social marketing on PrEP. We will explore the kind of embedded community knowledge found in the vernacular (Johnson, 2001) and compare this to the grain of public health messaging. This will explicitly explore sex, race, and sexuality within the domains of queer intercultural communication. In order to better understand how queer intercultural theory intersects with social marketing, this chapter utilizes a case study approach. The promise of the case study approach can be seen in a myriad of fields, ranging from business to communication and public health (Crowe et al., 2011). This approach is most helpful when one wants to gain an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon. In other words, case studies can be used to explain, describe, or explore events in their everyday contexts. For example, imagine one wanted to understand the crisis communication strategies of public health departments during a disease outbreak. The case study approach would encourage one to isolate and analyze examples; for instance, one might deconstruct the communication strategies of the New York public health department during the Ebola virus outbreak. It is important to note that while case studies can be defined in a variety of ways, the approach requires researchers to study the phenomenon in its natural setting as opposed to an experimental design (Crowe et al., 2011). This chapter employs the instrumental case study approach; similar to the example above, this approach allows one to use a specific case to gain a more cohesive understanding of an issue. Crowe et al. (2011) explain that this approach prompts researchers to adopt an explanatory perspective, encouraging one to ask “how, what, and why” questions. In this chapter, we want to know how queer intercultural theory is used to influence social marketing techniques. In order to answer this question, we will examine the case of “HIV prevention just got easier,” an HIV campaign targeting Black and Latinx MSM. HIV PREVENTION JUST GOT EASIER? “HIV prevention just got easier” was placed throughout New York State, including New York City, Long Island, Rochester, Buffalo, and the Hudson Valley, starting in 2015 (Better World Advertising, n.d.). The ad features 13 executions of similar composition. Twelve are single people of varying ethnicities and gender identities standing on either a rooftop or in front of a forest. Both backgrounds are color-filtered in pink and purple hues. There is one execution with a couple: two young African American men on a rooftop. Under the tagline “HIV prevention just got easier” sits a second message: “PrEP is a once a day pill that can keep you HIV negative.” The ads are all in

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English and appear on bus shelters, subways, and other public displays, with an accompanying website and hashtag. The New York State AIDS Institute funded them to increase awareness of PrEP for “Black and Latinx transwomen, and men who have sex with men” (Better World Advertising, n.d.). Based on our view of queer intercultural communication, we will critique the ad based on three key points: naming, knowledge bases, and community identification(s). More Than a Name As the creators of the ad, the New York State AIDS Institute and Better World Advertising name the target population. They envision this campaign identifying those who are “Black and Latino” as well as “transwomen, and men who have sex with men.” The act of naming involves both the person calling out and the person who responds to the call, for there is a recognition that occurs between communicative partners (Eguchi & Asante, 2016; Martel, 2017; Namaste et al., 2012; Snorton, 2014). We want to examine more closely how the ad positions both the New York State AIDS Institute and the campaign’s targeted communities. The social marketing campaign utilizes specific kinds of identities in its language and visual rhetoric. The ad self-identifies as a medical expert through its language and design. The line “PrEP is a once a day pill that can keep you HIV negative” is in a different typeface and placed in a white box, as if it were a message from another space. It is reminiscent of warning labels in its placement, bringing the eye to it and maintaining the health department’s discursive position as scientific, medical, and health expert. The typeface is straight and borders on geometric, contrasted to the more casual and diagonal look of the header “HIV prevention just got easier.” In addition, the “medical” message is accompanied by an asterisk, as if more information is available or supports it. The focus on individuals in most of the executions seems to evoke a testimonial style for the message. In each, it is as if the models are speaking to the audience directly, with casual “HIV prevention just got easier.” The ad attempts to make it seem as if these individuals are using PrEP, in order perhaps to expand on the idea of who is eligible or who should be using it. The backgrounds are meant to make the ads more realistic, with the cityscapes for the “urban” ads and the forests for the “upstate” executions. The ad creators indicate that they intend to target “Black and Latino” gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, as well as trans individuals. When “Black” is invoked rather than “African American” in the context of New York, we assume they are purposefully attempting to include Black immigrants or people from the African diaspora (including Caribbean and Afro Latinxs). In each ad, a White, Black or presumably Latinx male or

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female looks directly at the camera. There is one pair of African American men who stand next to each other. When reviewing the 13 executions, it is difficult to imagine that the visual or rhetorical strategies involve some larger view of blackness or Latinx-ness. Similarly, there is no indicator that these individuals are part of the gay, bisexual, or trans communities. The ads use only English, and it’s a standardized English across all executions, as if all people speak in the same way about HIV, PrEP, and sex. These isolated individuals do not speak of a community of same-sex or trans desire much less a sexuality culturally marked by blackness and Latinx-ness. This limited view of Black and Latinx gay, bisexual, and trans life is common in U.S. media (Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Spieldenner & Castro, 2010). In fact, there are no cultural cues in the ads. Rather, the focus in visuals and language is generic. This flattening of identities reads as shallow. The social marketing campaign purposefully ignores differences and attempts to show the difficult action of HIV prevention as simple and easy. The ad ignores concerns about toxicity or adherence. The ad assumes that all New Yorkers—wherever they live, however they identify, whatever their race, sexuality, gender identity, immigration status, capacity, or socioeconomic status—are the same. This kind of flattening does little to cultivate an inclusive narrative for those of us who are indeed socially marginalized through our identities. Many social marketing campaigns assume that different identities are connected when, in fact, they may not be. Namaste et al. (2012) conducted qualitative research with bisexual men and their experiences with HIV prevention campaigns. Overwhelmingly, the men did not acknowledge the gayor MSM-focused HIV prevention campaigns, including the messages or technical information about HIV transmission. While the health organizations who put out the campaigns probably imagined that bisexual men would consider their male-male sexual relations applicable to the campaigns, bisexual individuals did not. The health organizations failed to understand how people identify and how deeply this identification would limit or encourage their reading of the ads. While the New York State AIDS Institute attempts to name Black and Latinx transwomen and men who have sex with men in “HIV prevention just got easier,” their call falls flat. Instead of embracing the cultural specificities of identity, the campaign imagines a “universal” voice. Because the ads feature only one person, it is difficult to discern if gay or bisexual men, transwomen, or other queer people are even in the ads. The New York State AIDS Institute does not demonstrate that it knows the target communities by appropriately naming them. The public health message assumes that its language is universal when it is already involved in discourses of power as an “expert,” denying what the community may already know or even how the

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community wants to be named (Namaste et al., 2012; Spieldenner, 2017; Spieldenner et al., 2019). Kinds of Knowledge In terms of kinds of knowledge, the social marketing campaign values scientific and public health values. It insists that “condoms should be used for STD protection” in the asterisked message at the bottom of the ad. Vernacular knowledge might be that PrEP use is to avoid condom use for the sake of pleasure or a disdain of condoms. Yet public health messaging insists on PrEP plus condoms. This kind of logic has been prevalent in HIV public health messaging—which has been slow to declare oral sex or serosorting as safe-sex practices (when neither will transmit HIV) (Spieldenner, 2017). Community knowledge about HIV is a kind of vernacular knowledge. Escoffier (1998) posits that understanding the vernacular knowledge “is dispersed throughout society; it is a component in everyday social interactions, skills, practices, social networks, and institutions” (p. 4). Within HIV, Escoffier points out how the gay community came up with safer-sex strategies such as condom use or strategic topping in anal intercourse as a vernacular knowledge. Lee (2013) points to the common knowledge in the gay community as HIV literacy, where the “emergence of AIDS demanded familiarity with the terms” referring to the epidemic (p. 149). In this way, the gay community in the United States maintained a higher general knowledge about HIV issues and information. This HIV literacy acknowledges the “difference between . . . knowledge of AIDS and . . . experience of AIDS” (Lee, 2013, p. 155). Clearly, there is a relatively high level of HIV knowledge already in the purported target community of “HIV prevention just got easier.” Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men, as well as transwomen, have been the focus of HIV education materials for decades as well as part of a community with a long history of HIV prevalence (Spieldenner & Castro, 2010). By ignoring vernacular HIV knowledge, the ad does (at least) two things: It reifies public health expert knowledge as the sole arbiter of prevention knowledge, and it minimizes the community knowledge. By maintaining the public health expert knowledge, the social marketing campaigns are part of how governmentality functions. In Foucaultian terms, governmentality is a process where the state forms as an entity to control the populace. As state governments arise, people surrender agency in multiple areas. In this case, people become docile bodies, especially in terms of politics and economics, permitting the state to exert and maintain control in these areas. In the case of HIV social marketing ads, the public health agency is believed as the credible expert to which individuals are expected to submit.

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“HIV prevention just got easier” relies on discourses that reify the health department as holding expert power. It establishes this expert position through its language and typography. By reproducing these hierarchies of power, the campaign becomes part of a communication that marginalizes its targeted communities. Rather than creating “new spaces for ‘other bodies’ to articulate their embodied experiences and to speak as subjects rather than objects of knowledge” (Yep, 2013, p. 124), the ad maintains strict power relationships between the speaker (the health department) and the receiver (Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men and transwomen). The ads minimize community knowledge. Within HIV, community knowledge has been a key concept in prevention and treatment. From the start, public health initiatives have failed to provide useful, practical HIV prevention information—including painting all sexual risks with the same broad brush, ignoring the efficacy in serosorting, and shutting down gay sex environments like bathhouses that could have served as key dissemination places for information and prevention tools (such as condoms) (Spieldenner, 2017). In fact, the initial HIV prevention information in the United States emerged from gay community groups, without any backing by public health organizations until years later (Escoffier, 1998). Community knowledge has also been key in HIV treatment as well. Before the availability of antiretroviral therapies, HIV treatment was a mystery, and medical providers guessed at solutions. People living with HIV became experts in HIV medical care and were often treated as equals in the clinical relationship. Community organizing around HIV further supported the notion that people living with HIV are experts in matters concerning living with HIV, including treatment (Spieldenner et al., 2019). When the vernacular knowledge is not acknowledged or engaged, the community may not incorporate the new product within their everyday practices. In this case, PrEP usage may not be accepted as a norm within the community. The ad asserts that “HIV prevention just got easier” without taking into account how the target communities manage HIV prevention. There are a number of practices that community members may engage in to prevent HIV transmission, including serosorting, HIV viral suppression, condom usage, sex and drug-user partner reduction, abstinence, and choosing nonpenetrative sex such as fellatio, mutual masturbation, or bondage, among others. In addition, the assertion that PrEP is “easier” than other options may or may not be true across all communities where medication might be difficult to access and adhere to, social norms do not include HIV medications, and there is potential stigma associated with PrEP use (Spieldenner, 2016). “HIV prevention just got easier” instead minimizes these potential strategies, thus limiting the conversation possible between communication partners.

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What Community? Communities are comprised of membership rules. In the case of “HIV prevention just got easier,” the intended targets are Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men and transwomen. With this focus, it would be reasonable to expect specific cultural frameworks in play that speak directly to people of that experience. If one were not part of this community, it would similarly be reasonable to expect the campaign to be only partially legible. There is a specificity to Black and Latinx gay and bisexual life, as well as to that of transwomen, that would be illegible to those not part of the community (Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Snorton, 2014). In the campaign, the identification with various communities is thin. Even the use of individuals in 12 of the ad executions purposefully cuts off the individuals from a wider sense of community. Rather than acknowledging the nuances of difference and community connections—say, for instance, placing the individuals within various contexts like meeting friends—the ads show the individuals in similar poses and backgrounds as if they were interchangeable. By positioning them as individuals, the campaigns emphasize the individual choice in taking PrEP. The logic in the ad seems to promote the idea of using PrEP for oneself, a laudable notion that privileges individualism. This kind of logic fails the alleged targets of the campaign in two distinct ways: It imagines that Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men, as well as transwomen, do not need community, and it supposes that sexual decisions are made alone. Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men, as well as transwomen, like other LGBTQ people of color, often have thick community connections. The concept of “chosen family” in LGBTQ life comes from a time when families commonly distanced themselves from their LGBTQ kin (Escoffier, 1998). In these cases, LGBTQ individuals created community among other LGBTQ people and allies in the face of a homophobic society. For LGBTQ people of color, this chosen family is also complicated by concerns about race and racism. For Black gay and bisexual men and transwomen, this community connection could be about maintaining connection to biological family in order to manage an openly hostile, racist, homophobic, sexist, classist, and ableist environment (Johnson, 2001). In addition, Black gay and bisexual men, as well as transwomen, might seek out other Black LGBTQ individuals in order to build community (Hemphill, 1991). For Latinx gay and bisexual men, as well as transwomen, the community connection remains a vital, if contested, space (Anzaldúa, 1987; Chávez, 2013a; Ramirez-Valles, 2011). Latinx communities in the United States are often bilingual and consist of multiple ethnic identities and immigration statuses. These facets present different concerns from what African Americans experience. People of color are not interchangeable in the United States.

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When attempting to diminish these connections, the ad presupposed a level of individuality that is disconcerting, reading “false” at best and damaging at worst. Hemphill (1991) pleads, “It is not enough to tell us that one was a brilliant poet, scientist, educator, or rebel. Who did he love? It makes a difference. I can’t become a whole man simply on what is fed to me: watered-down version of black life in America. I need the ass-splitting truth to be told, so I will something pure to emulate, a reason to remain loyal” (p. xxix). Hemphill’s demand is the inclusion of our communities—where LGBTQ people of color stand out, to give other queer people of color “something pure to emulate” rather than the “watered-down version[s]” provided in mainstream representation. Rather than being “neutral” or “generic,” this “watered-down version” is proven to be damaging. Through its focus on individualism, the campaign also purports that sexual decisions are made alone. Yet sex, by its definition, involves others. People pursuing sexual partners are doing so in an effort to connect in some way (Spieldenner, 2017). The ad’s logic does not take this motivation into account, making it seem as if people must protect themselves from others. To put it another way, the sexual partner is a potential threat. This has been a long-standing theme in HIV prevention (Escoffier, 1998; Spieldenner & Castro, 2010). By focusing on individualism, the campaign reifies discourses of fear and sex for Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men and transwomen. “HIV prevention just got easier” does not communicate to the audience or with the message it intends. Rather than seeing Black and Latinx gay, bisexual and other MSM, and transwomen as unique, part of a community, with nuanced concerns about sexual choices and medical health, the campaign relegates these communities to generic, one-size-fits-all visuals and rhetoric. The campaign further denies the embodied knowledge that queer people of color have when it comes to HIV prevention and sexual agency by privileging the public health voice as the expert voice in the messaging. In these ways, the ad fails as an intercultural interlocutor between health department and Black and Latinx gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, and transwomen. We assert that the health department’s attempt with the campaign to engage in intercultural communication with Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men and transwomen does little to connect with the nuances of the communities. Chávez (2013b) points out that “intercultural exchanges are complex and multi-faceted, and they create significant space . . . to ask questions about the conditions for dialogue” (p. 89). Rather than open a dialogue, the ad is presented as a prescription for individuals to protect themselves from others they are trying to connect with through sex and drugusing behaviors. This limited view of communities does not empower, engage, or encourage people to change their behavior.

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CONCLUSION We use queer intercultural communication to provide readings for a social marketing campaign trying to reach African American and Latinx gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. This study does not indicate whether these social marketing campaigns “failed” or “succeeded.” We would caution any reading of public health social marketing in terms of complete success or failure. While academic peer-review journals prefer neat narratives of clean data, good outcomes, and statistical significance, we would argue that understanding community discourses, norms, and meanings can be known through queer intercultural communication. Social marketing campaigns—while important—cannot eliminate health disparities on their own. Their utility is multifold in a larger public health initiative. In the case of PrEP, they increase awareness of the tool, encourage PrEP use, and engage in multiple discourses around HIV and gay sex within and about the LGBTQ communities. With the PrEP social marketing aimed at African American and Latinx gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, as well as transwomen, we would encourage a broader understanding of sexual and cultural narratives. By using a queer intercultural communication method, the creators of social marketing campaigns are more likely to understand how sexual communities develop culturally coded communication styles. The flattening of differences across cultural groups—including African American, Black, and Latinx gay, bisexual, and other MSM—denies the unique ways that sexual communities culturally communicate. Responding to the call of Eguchi, Calafell, and Files-Thompson (2014), we attend to “unique and particular challenges that GLBTQ members of color must negotiate as a result of their racialized, gendered, and class positionality” (p. 386). To unpack these differences requires more than a focus group; it also requires extensive knowledge and care brought on by extended engagement with the literature about the community, as well as its membership. To most communities, public health agencies are a mainstream author of social marketing campaigns. As such, they represent an interlocutor with institutional and social power. In attempting to include and communicate with marginalized communities, public health agencies could use queer intercultural communication to better understand the communities and how images and messages might be construed. Since social marketing is a public discourse, public health agencies should be mindful of the ways that social marketing messages amplify and engage community and public discourses about the “target population.”

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. How does the marketing mix of social marketing become complicated through queer intercultural communication? 2. How can a one-size-fits-all social marketing campaign accommodate different communities? 3. When considering HIV, how do sexual behaviors affect how one conceptualizes a “target audience”? KEY WORDS • • • • •

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Chapter Eleven

(Re)defining Boundaries and the Politics of Belonging in the Film Pariah Sheena C. Howard

Pariah is the first film featuring a Black lesbian main character to be distributed by a major distribution and production company. After winning several awards at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, the film had a limited theatrical release in 2011, making it iconic within the history of American film. As a Black, queer, female scholar-researcher, I am intellectually and politically drawn to Pariah as the media and cultural text because it resonates with who I am and what I do. Thus I am interested in using cultural prism theory (see Howard, 2018) to argue that Pariah not only challenges normative notions of representation but also articulates the exclusionary practices of the gay rights movement by both challenging boundaries around belonging and rejecting dominant cultural norms inside and outside of the LGBTQ community. In articulating this argument, I conceptually draw on the work of Nira Yuval-Davis’s (2006) politics of belonging and my (2014) Black Queer Identity Matrix. More specifically, Pariah was the first feature film of director and screenwriter Dee Rees, who has described the film as “semiautobiographical” and who is an out lesbian. Pariah (2011) was first released as a short film in 2006 after amassing several short-film awards at film festivals and attracting additional investors. The film was picked up out of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival by Focus Features, a distribution and production company, for a 2011 full feature limited theatrical release. Despite these achievements, Dee Rees has not been shy about publicly addressing the ways in which the film industry discriminates against Black lesbian women. In a Variety article by Cynthia Littleton (2015), Rees stated, “If I had been a filmmaker of another ilk, I’d probably have been on a stratospheric trajectory after I hit Sundance. 217

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Going into a room and saying, ‘I’m a black lesbian’—it’s a strike against you” (para. 5). Thus, the film as well as the production of the film makes a statement about belonging as it relates to the American cultural value system. Belonging is not just about social locations, constructions of individual and collective identities, and attachments but also about the ways these are valued and judged (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Pariah centers on Alike, a 17-year-old, intelligent high school student who lives in Brooklyn, New York, as the main protagonist. It is a coming-ofage story that chronicles young Alike’s struggle to find belonging while living with her religious mother, who does not agree with her sexual orientation, and her father, who is in denial about her sexual orientation. Alike lives with her parents and sister in a middle-class home that is often volatile because of her parents’ incessant arguing. Often the parents argue about Alike’s sexual orientation, and other times they argue about the father’s possible infidelity. The film takes the audience on an emotionally charged journey as Alike struggles to conceal her social life from her family, all the while being clear with herself that she is a lesbian. This is not a film about a young person discovering or coming to grips with her sexual orientation; it is a film about the world around her struggling to accept her sexual orientation and gender expression. It is both an empowering and emotionally charged journey as viewers see Alike hide the masculine-identified clothing she wears outside of her home and change into more feminine-identified clothing when she is back home with her family. The audience witnesses physical violence, isolation, and homelessness across varying character storylines, but we see physical abuse toward Alike after she outright states to her mother and father, “I am a lesbian” (Cooper & Rees, 2011). Adding layers to the nuanced approach the film takes in exploring Alike’s life, we witness Alike’s mother constantly seeking to “feminize” her by pressuring her to dress and wear her hair according to societal norms of femininity. In addition, the film uses Black lesbian language systems such as identifying masculine-presenting lesbians as “AGs” (aggressives) or “butch” or “studs.” Research on Black lesbian identity has studied the use of Black lesbian language and code names such as AG, femme, and stud to describe different types of Black lesbians and the way they present their gender (e.g., Moore, 2006). Thus, this analysis is in line with queer intercultural communication scholarship, which seeks to address the intersectional modes of sexuality, sex/gender, and performance across multiple sociopolitical, economic, and historical positionings (see Eguchi, 2015; Eguchi & Asante, 2016), with a focus on Black lesbian communication dynamics and identities. As such, the film chronicles Alike’s struggle to fit into the culture-specific dynamics of the Black lesbian community as well as the larger dominant heteronormative landscape. Like all teenagers, she is finding herself: where she belongs and

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the social circles she fits into. These dynamics make this film fitting for analysis as we consider queer intercultural communication scholarship. Pariah, definitionally meaning “outcast,” is a story about Alike’s construction of her identity and the world around her struggling with her sexuality. Black lesbian women are minorities on three counts, and they must learn to develop a particular set of communication patterns in order to survive (Howard, 2014). Pariah provides the audience with nuance around the communication dynamics employed by Alike as she navigates these circumstances. As I note in the book Black Queer Identity Matrix: Towards an Integrated Queer of Color Framework (2014): Black lesbians are members within an environment that has the power to shape one’s sense of self and to rearrange or challenge one’s own worldview. Black lesbian women are a product of all the nuances of the United States—social hierarchy, capitalism, sexism, racism, heterosexism, a market economy, neoliberalism, to name a few—that influence one’s communication patterns as well as one’s own self-awareness. Therefore, Black lesbian women are enclosed or embedded within the fabric of America and must survive despite inequality and oppressive structural systems. (p. 76)

In line with this notion, Pariah is a story about how the world (mis)treats Alike and how she responds to that treatment. Black lesbian women are forced to develop communication patterns and coping mechanisms in order to deal with the oppressive societal structures that view them as inferior (Howard, 2014). These nuances add to the mainstream body of queer communication scholarship that has mostly addressed the needs of nonheteronormative knowing, being, and acting that are relevant to White, U.S. American, and middle-class people (see Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014). The intersectional modes of sexuality, sex/gender, and body across multiple sociopolitical, economic, and historical positionings remain understudied (Eng, Halberstam, & Muñoz, 2005). As such, this chapter moves queer intercultural communication scholarship forward by expanding upon the framework of Black Queer Identity Matrix (2014), which is grounded in Black lesbian communicative processes and experiences. FOCUS OF THIS STUDY Pariah does not merely signify the isolation of young Alike as she develops into her identity; it also represents the social and cultural isolation of Black lesbian women across both the LGBTQ movement and the larger American cultural landscape. This two-layered approach to exploring the politics of belonging through the production of Pariah will be expounded upon by addressing the following research questions: (1) How does the film Pariah

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challenge the boundaries of belonging as it relates to the LGBTQ community and the larger American cultural landscape? and (2) How does the film Pariah reject the cultural norms of the gay rights movement? As previously mentioned, these questions will be explored through the lens of Yuval-Davis’s (2006) politics of belonging and the Black lesbian identity conceptual framework I presented in Black Queer Identity Matrix (2014). Cultural prism theory (CPT) will be utilized in order to expound upon the historical, cultural, and political impact moments that ground the production of Pariah as it relates to these research questions. Emphasizing the logics of selfhood, individual agency, and experience, queer theory fails to locate the significance of relationships, communalities, and collective resistance for LGBTQ people of color (Eguchi & Asante, 2016). The following analysis addresses the latter but also positions Yuval-Davis’s politics of belonging and CPT as pivotal in moving queer intercultural communication scholarship forward. Intercultural communication dynamics are often rooted in a set of culture-specific group dynamics that emerge from a politics of belonging. CULTURAL PRISM THEORY AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING I apply CPT against the backdrop of politics of belonging in order to situate Pariah within a cultural, historical, and political trajectory that addresses the chapter’s proposed research questions. Queer intercultural communication scholarship understands the importance of locating culture-specific experiences within the larger social, cultural, political, and economic climates from which they emerge (e.g., Chávez, 2013; Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Johnson, 2001). CPT is grounded in this assumption. Though the function of all rhetorical criticism scholarship varies, popular culture texts are often analyzed and deconstructed without an adequate examination of the impacts of historical, political, economic, and cultural elements that give birth to and influence such texts (Howard, 2018). That is, these impacts embody the cultural prism or matrix of moments in which a text lives. The historical, economic, political, and cultural moments that influence the birth of a popular culture text such as Pariah answer critical questions around the politics of belonging, representation, and the (re)production of harmful cultural norms, which all have implications for queer intercultural communication epistemologies. That is, an adequate examination of the cultural prism of an artifact illustrates the (in)visibility of Black lesbian women, across mass media as well as material life, and the implications of that (in)visibility. It is true that moments in time have much to do with the success or lack of success of artifacts, as does the work behind producing such artifacts (Howard, 2018). Given the rare focus in film on Black lesbian

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identity, Pariah was a success as measured against the few other extant films centering Black lesbian identity; thus it is pivotal to examine such a film. CPT is a fitting framework to expound upon the nuances around the publication of Pariah. Here, CPT will allow for an examination of the historical, political, and cultural dynamics in which Pariah is grounded. These impact moments, as CPT defines them (Howard, 2018), will be addressed through the lens of a politics of belonging and my Black Queer Identity Matrix, the latter allowing for the use of a conceptual framework specific to Black lesbian identity. ANALYSIS The study begins by expounding upon historical impacts so the reader can situate Pariah within the canon of American film history and adequately examine the politics of belonging across the film industry as it relates to Black LGBTQ material life. Historical Impacts Historically, Pariah finds itself in a category of its own, as there have been no theatrical films produced and distributed by a major production company that center a Black lesbian lead character that this researcher could find. Up until the theatrical release of Pariah in 2011, there were a handful of Black LGBTQ story lines in film and TV but no theatrical releases nationally distributed that centered Black lesbian identity. In the 20 years prior to Pariah, notable theoretical films that included a Black female LGBTQ character were Set It Off (1996) and She Hate Me (2004), the latter a very troubling Spike Lee depiction of Black female sexuality. She Hate Me centered on a successful Black businessman who began making money by impregnating Black lesbian women who were interested in motherhood. The implications of this film and its messaging are not the focus of this study, but She Hate Me does show the trajectory of harmful depictions of Black lesbians in film, especially considering the historical lack of varied representations of Black lesbians in film. She Hate Me shows the ways in which Pariah is situated in a troubling historical mass-mediated representation of Black lesbians, especially as we consider media a “significant site through which a politics of belonging is played out” (Nolan, Burgin, Farquharson, & Marjoribanks, 2016). The repudiation of Black lesbians in film is evident when looking at the trajectory of White gay and lesbian characters in film during this same time period. In the early 2000s, there were a number of shows and main characters on mainstream networks depicting varied expressions of White lesbian and gay people. These shows included but are not limited to The L Word

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(2004–2009), Queer as Folk (2000–2005), Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003–2007), and Six Feet Under (2001–2005). This does not include the extensive list of shows that included White lesbian and gay substory lines, such as Grey’s Anatomy (2005) and Shameless (2011). This mass-mediated denial of Black lesbian identity on screen as White lesbian and gay identity became more and more visible through the early 2000s is a clear marker of the social isolation of Black lesbian women. As such, I find it important to note the production work centering on Black lesbian identity and main characters that did not enjoy the success of major distribution or airing on major television and cable networks, such as the film Watermelon Woman (1996). Watermelon Woman (1996), by screenwriter-director Cheryl Dunye, centered on a Black lesbian lead character. Watermelon Woman won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film in 1996 despite having a low budget and being unpolished. Watermelon Woman features the main character Cheryl, a young, Black lesbian working in Philadelphia with her best friend Tamara. Dunye managed to create a realistic fictional history in an effort to explore themes of race and sexuality. In addition to independent film, popular shows on major networks, such as The L Word and The Wire (2002–2008), did include substories with Black lesbian characters. However, portrayals of Black lesbian women on center stage were still taboo, even in the early 2000s when White gay and lesbian visibility was steadily increasing. Prior to Pariah, there had been several low-budget films about Black lesbian women created by Black women, but these films had not enjoyed major distribution, theatrical releases, or major network spots. One notable 1980s depiction of Black female sexuality in a major motion picture was The Color Purple (1982). The popular film (and book) touched on Black female sexuality, even depicting two Black women kissing. In The Color Purple, Celie, the main character, says she doesn’t look at men because they scare her. Instead, she looks at women. Women are the only people who have ever been kind to her. Celie’s sexuality becomes that of a woman who loves other women (“The Color Purple Theme,” n.d.). In the film, Celie and Shug, another Black female character, have an intimate kiss in a scene that lasts a little over a minute. It was indeed controversial, and there was no declaration in the film of Celie’s or Shug’s sexual orientation. The audience was forced to reconcile Celie’s affinity for other women against the backdrop of the horrible and cruel ways Black men treated Celie throughout her life. As of this writing, this sense of uneasiness with Black women loving Black women in film continues, even though there has been positive progress since the early 2000s. In fact, the more contemporary blockbuster hit Black Panther (2018) removed a scene that would hint at a Black lesbian relationship, even though the comic book that preceded the film explicitly depicted a Black lesbian intimate relationship.

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This cursory look at where Pariah is situated historically shows that Pariah is a major historical moment in American cinema. Yet, this tenuous and troubling history of Black lesbian media representation situates Pariah within a historical trajectory that has ostracized Black lesbian identity and the full spectrum of Black lesbian life. While attitudes around LGBTQ people were becoming more affirming culturally and politically (Smith, 2011) leading up to the 2011 production of Pariah, Black lesbian representation in the media did not parallel this display of affirmation. That is, Black lesbian identity in film, especially mainstream film, remained largely invisible and problematic in the decades preceding Pariah. According to Nolan et al. (2016), “work on belonging has focused on how the performative actions of subjects are reliant on ‘social scripts’ and ‘interpretive repertoires’” (p. 254). Thus, when analyzing the representation of Black lesbians in film preceding the production of Pariah, the performative actions of Black lesbians, as depicted, have served to reproduce the heteronormative-racialized social order to which Black lesbian women are relegated. This concept has been approached on two levels. First, belonging refers to the confidence and/or trust we have in the world around us. This feeling of trust and confidence then allows for a sense of feeling settled and/or comfortable. These layers allow for one to feel stable and to experience a sense of continuity in one’s identity. A sense of security and comfort has several dimensions. These dimensions include material well-being and economic security as well as a capacity both to operate and be welcomed within various social networks and sites of interpersonal exchange. Conversely, according to Nolan et al. (2016), “the experience of discrimination and exclusion may contribute to both material and affective dimensions of disadvantage. Experiences of ‘homely belonging’ and its obverse are thus thoroughly intertwined with and alwaysalready conditioned by, the effects of a ‘politics of belonging’ through which such experiences are socially produced and (variably) distributed” (pp. 254–255). This notion is pertinent to the ways in which belonging operates in American society for Black lesbian women, evidenced in the historical-cultural-political prism in which Pariah is grounded. Pariah is situated within a historical erasure of the full spectrum of Black lesbian identity and experience. The historical canon of Black life as depicted in film does not often include Black lesbian women, and when it does, it is a problematic representation of Black lesbian life and experience, which disallows for homely belonging. Homely belonging is an aspect of human life that is pivotal in developing a healthy sense of social acceptance and coexistence. Coexistence and acceptance are vital to the lived experience of Black lesbian women. Research into Black lesbian lived experience notes that Black lesbians long for coexistence within an oppressive American society (see Howard, 2014). I define coexistence “as learning to live together, accept difference, and make the world a safe place for difference” (2014, p. 57).

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Film, as a major American cultural vehicle, has historically been a place of exclusion for Black lesbian women, neither affirming the community’s identity nor normalizing said identity. Thus, the existence of Pariah in this historical canon of American film redefines the boundaries of belonging not only across the LGBTQ community but also across the larger U.S. cultural landscape. Pariah represents a discernible object of struggle to infiltrate the film industry and make the lives of Black lesbian women visible, humane, and viable. As Nolan et al. (2016) note, “Struggle for recognition within a national space, or to redefine the boundaries around which an economy of national belonging operates, is not because nationhood has an inherent value, but because it provides a significant ground upon and through which ‘belonging’ is socially organized and distributed” (p. 255). Pariah is iconic in the way it acted as a future trajectory for Black lesbian representation in film, both on and off screen. Though there is still much work to be done around visibility and inclusion for Black lesbian women, as of 2018, the popular show Orange Is the New Black signified progress. In 2013, Samira Wiley played Black female lesbian character Poussey Washington in the Netflix original series. She would be one of the lead characters for four seasons of the show, which also featured actress Laverne Cox as a Black transgender character. In 2017, Lena Waithe, an out Black lesbian writer, actress, and producer, won “Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series” for her work on Master of None at the 69th Emmy Awards ceremony. The episode for which she won the award was partially based on her personal experience coming out to her mother. These representations in film mark a significant turn in visibility for Black lesbian women post-Pariah, in which the politics of belonging continues to be contested and challenged across the film industry. Yuval-Davis (2006) maintains that identities are narratives, stories people tell themselves and others about who they are (and who they are not). Not all of these stories are about belonging to particular groupings and collectivities; they can be, for instance, about individual attributes, body images, vocational aspirations or sexual prowess. However, even such stories often relate, directly or indirectly, to self and/or others’ perceptions of what being a member in such a grouping or collectivity (ethnic, racial, national, cultural, religious) might mean. The identity narratives can be individual or they can be collective, the latter often a resource for the former. Although they can be reproduced from generation to generation, this reproduction is always carried out in a selective way. (p. 202)

This progress in representation, post-Pariah, is a steady redefining of American cultural norms in film and a demand by Black lesbian women to be recognized, through creation of identity narratives and a contestation of the historical ways in which the Black lesbian community has been symbolically annihilated in film and on TV. It can be argued that Pariah was the catalyst

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of this trajectory. As CPT demands, it is important to connect these historical moments with cultural and political moments that contextualize Pariah and its relation to the proposed research questions. As such, this study will move on to address the cultural and political impact moments in which Pariah is located in order to make the aforementioned connections. Cultural Impacts First, in articulating the larger American cultural landscape during the time Pariah was released, it is fitting to begin with the ways in which the film was described in a New York Times 2011 review. According to Nelson George (2011), Early in the film it journeys into a Brooklyn strip club where scantily clad young black women gyrate to a sexy, foul-mouthed rap song. Lascivious customers leer, toss money and revel in their own unbridled lust. It is a scene that could have been in any of “the hood movies” that once proliferated or even a Tyler Perry melodrama in which Christian values would be affirmed after this bit of titillation. But in “Pariah” the gaze of desire doesn’t emanate from predatory males but A.G.’s, that is aggressive lesbians, who, in a safe space where they enjoy the fellowship of peers, can be true to themselves. (para. 1)

The film immediately lets viewers know that this film will be a journey into the life of a lead character that we rarely see on the big screen, thus rejecting normative mass-mediated cultural norms. From this opening scene the audience is told that this film will be a raw and rare depiction of a Black lesbian girl within the cultural landscape of the many aspects of the Black community, including those aspects neglected by mainstream media. This opening scene also sets the tone for two aspects that this chapter explores: (1) the rejection of the cultural norms depicted across the gay rights movement, particularly leading up to 2011, when the film was theatrically released, and (2) a challenge to the boundaries of belonging. The first scene in Pariah shows Alike in a strip club with her best friend Laura. Immediately viewers get to see something in theaters that has rarely, if ever, been seen before—that is, Black lesbians in a strip club gazing at female strippers in a fashion similar to that of heterosexual males. However, the gaze in Pariah is not through the male lens; it is through that of Black lesbian women enjoying a safe space in which they can be themselves. The scene of Black lesbians lusting after strippers and throwing money on strippers does not negate the patriarchal and sexist nature of strip clubs and actually creates space for a conversation around the ways in which Black lesbian women also reproduce heteronormative cultural signifiers of normative masculinity. 1 However, that is not the focus of this chapter. Instead, this section focuses on the cultural climate and cultural impact moments that

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culminate to shed light on the production of Pariah and the cultural implications of the production of the film. George’s 2011 review of the movie Pariah in the New York Times shows the historical-cultural moment in which Pariah lives. In reference to the strip club scene, George (2011) writes, “Other films have depicted this particular black alternative life (as did a couple of memorable characters in HBO’s masterly series ‘The Wire’), but no film made by a black lesbian about being a black lesbian has ever received the kind of attention showered on Ms. Rees’s film” (para. 2). Here, George’s use of “black alternative life” signifies the politics of belonging on two levels. The first is the rhetorical use of “black alternative life,” and the second is the reality of a film about a Black lesbian lead receiving national attention. George’s rhetorical use of “black alternative life” is a signifier of where society was in relation to acceptance of Black lesbian identity in 2011. That is, his statement “black alternative life” reproduces the notion that Black lesbian identity is “alternative” or abnormal—in essence, it does not yet belong. This use of rhetorical language is a signifier of the cultural forces that speak to the societal view of Black lesbian life during that time period. Culturally, what the reviewer is stating is that Black lesbians at a strip club is a performative action that is outside of a normative cultural behavior. While a Black heterosexual male at a strip club would not be considered to reflect “black alternative life,” the idea of lesbians at a strip club is “deviant.” As this is an example of a very specific writer making a cultural statement about the film, it is important to zoom out in order to engage with the larger cultural American landscape in which Pariah was produced. In terms of the larger cultural American landscape leading up to 2011 when the film aired theatrically, there had been a drastic change in public attitudes toward gays and lesbians (Smith, 2011). During this time, there had even emerged a plurality who approved of same-sex marriage, support of basic civil liberties, and freedom of expression for gays and lesbians, in contrast to sharp division on such issues in the 1970s (Smith, 2011). The cultural moment in which Pariah was released was that of a public trending toward a greater acceptance of homosexuality, making way for the acceptance of this film on screen. This drastic trend toward acceptance cannot be dismissed as we consider the theatrical release of a film focused on a lesbian teenager and the ways in which her family struggled with who she was becoming. While gays and lesbians moved toward more acceptance, culturally, families were also struggling to deal with their children and, in some cases, parents “coming out.” The film is situated in a cultural moment in which straight and gay people could relate. This cannot be ignored as the success of the film is considered. The film The Kids Are All Right (2010), distributed by Focus Features (also the distributor of Pariah), dealt with

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similar familial dynamics; however, it did not include a single LGBTQ character of color. In 2011, according to Smith, “the rise in support for same-sex marriage has been especially dramatic over the last two decades.” It went from “11 percent approval in 1988 to 46 percent in 2010, compared to 40 percent who were opposed, producing a narrow plurality in favor for the first time” (Smith, 2011). This report was based on findings of the General Social Survey, conducted in 2010 with a cross sample of more than 2,000 people. These statistics are emblematic of a public that was at least willing to entertain a film about a lesbian character and perhaps sympathize with that character as well as the tribulations of her family as they struggled to accept Alike’s sexual orientation. Without these more accepting views on gays and lesbians, it is unlikely a film about a Black lesbian teenager lead would have been produced and distributed by a major distribution company, even though it only had a limited release in theaters. This is indicative of a major milestone for such a film. In conjunction with these changing public attitudes toward gays and lesbians, audiences had been primed with popular television shows that portrayed Black lesbians as minor characters that did fairly well in the market, such as The L Word (2004–2009) and The Wire (2002–2008). These shows speak to a cultural trend of acceptance in audiences being amicable to the portrayal of Black lesbians on screen, even though these shows did not feature Black lesbians as lead characters. The lack of Black lesbian lead characters in mainstream films and television shows speaks to the cultural significance of Pariah as well as the cultural work that needed to continue post-Pariah. The movie is a cultural icon within the canon of not only Black lesbian cinema but also American cinema. It did something no film before it had done: It featured a Black lesbian lead and had a theatrical release by a major distribution company. Its “success” is measured by its limited theatrical release, its host of awards, its popularity at Sundance Film Festival, and its gross U.S. sales of over $700,000. Quite frankly, its success is measured by its mere existence. In the early 2000s the gay rights movement had been making major political gains, with same-sex marriage being legalized in places such as Washington, DC, and New York. Culturally, the gay rights movement was focused on visibility and garnering support from the heterosexual community through engaging in narratives about love and similarity as opposed to difference. These cultural shifts were led by strategic activism and a persistent focus on visibility, ultimately leading to the gay rights slogan, “Love Is Love.” This visibility is particularly clear among shows and films focused on White gay and lesbian characters, such as The Kids Are All Right (2010), Queer as Folk (2000–2005), and films focused on gay Black men such as Noah’s Arc (2008). In addition, the creation of the Logo channel is a signifi-

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cant cultural marker of the early 2000s, demonstrating a cultural movement toward LGBTQ visibility. Media representation provides a vehicle to challenge dominant attitudes, values, and beliefs. Historically, it has been challenging to get the film industry on board with depicting the complexity and breadth of Black life; thus the production and distribution of Pariah marks a significant cultural moment, influenced by a series of cultural shifts and impact moments preceding its production. While attitudes around acceptance of LGBTQ peoples were growing around the year 2011, the gay rights movement was largely criticized for excluding people of color and depicting a face that was largely White and male. Pariah represents a face within the gay rights movement that was not and is not visible, thus rejecting and challenging the cultural norms of the gay rights movement. Cultural shifts always precede political shifts; thus representation in film is significant in ushering in affirming political values and ultimately legislative change. The next section will address the political impact moments in which Pariah is grounded. Political Impacts In the immediate years preceding the premiere of Pariah, the law had begun to shift toward a political valuing of LGBTQ rights around same-sex relationships. As mentioned, cultural attitudes had already been shifting positively since the early 2000s. The sole political focus of the gay rights movement was same-sex marriage, which was granted in 2015. For a gay White male, same-sex marriage would effectively position White cisgay men as equals to their White heterosexual cismale counterparts (see Han, 2007). Pariah, in 2011, challenged this single-dimension iconography of the gay rights movement while also speaking back against such a monolithic exclusionary platform. The politics of belonging comprises specific political projects aimed at constructing belonging in particular ways to particular collectivities (YuvalDavis, 2006). This political construction of gay and lesbian belonging worked in tandem with the cultural shift toward gay and lesbian acceptance while blatantly excluding Black and Brown peoples. According to Chongsuk Han (2007), the gay movement that once embodied the ideals of liberation, freedom, and social justice quickly turned to the causes of promoting gay pride through visibility and lobbying efforts that forced established institutions, particularly media institutions, to re-examine mainstream heterosexist bias against gay men and women. Doing so, however, led to the unfortunate consequence of ignoring non-gay issues such as homelessness, unemployment, welfare, universal health care, union organizing, affirmative action, and abortion rights. (p. 235)

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Promoting a single-issue gay agenda, such as marriage, meant promoting acceptance rather than liberation. As such, gay activists adopted various whitening practices to sell gay United States to the heartland of the country. These practices via media visibility have been discussed; however, the political lobbying of powerful institutions was perhaps the most important aspect of the movement as far as policy change. “Mirroring the whiteness of men who run powerful institutions as a strategy for winning credibility, acceptance, and integration, the movement excluded people of color from gay institutions; sold gay as white to raise money, make a profit, and gain economic power” (Bérubé, 2001, p. 246). Yet, Pariah served as a reminder that the political aims of the gay rights movement did not speak to the multifarious gay and lesbian communities and in fact excluded Black lesbian women both symbolically and in material life. Black lesbian women would indeed benefit from legislation around civil unions and same-sex marriage, but the agenda of the movement was a single issue that did not consider race, class, and, by extension, social belonging across the LGBTQ community. Pariah finds itself preceding the 2015 landmark decision to recognize same-sex marriage in the United States by just a few years. LGBTQ strategic organizing was at its height when Pariah was produced in 2011. This makes the production of Pariah significant in two ways. First, Pariah acted as a symbol of contesting the White male face of the gay rights movement. Second, Pariah marked the need for inclusion of Black lesbian narratives both politically as well as culturally and historically. Though gains were being made politically around same-sex acceptance, Pariah depicts a host of issues unrelated to same-sex marriage, including but not limited to Black youth homelessness, physical abuse, and the wider question of social belonging, which were not and are not at the forefront of the gay rights movement. Black lesbian women belonged to the gay rights movement by their de facto sexual orientation, but they did not belong to the mainstream political collective or discourse around LGBTQ social justice and the broader nuances of the politics of belonging. This single-issue approach to LGBTQ policy, which was exclusionary on its face and in practice, was what the gay rights movement pioneers determined it needed to take in order to make traction. As policies began to affirm same-sex relationships in the early 2000s, the face of the movement made a concerted effort to remain White. Policies began to rapidly change in the decade preceding the production of Pariah. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy laws were unconstitutional. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct” (“American Gay Rights Movement,” n.d.). That same year, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that barring gay and lesbian people from marrying violated the state constitution. Leading up to 2011, there had been a string of states recognizing “civil

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unions,” 2 including Connecticut and New Jersey. In 2010, same-sex marriage was legalized in the District of Columbia. In 2010, President Barack Obama repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the discriminatory law effectively requiring gay and lesbian military personnel to conceal their sexual orientation. In 2011, New York same-sex marriage became legal with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry and that states cannot say that marriage is reserved for heterosexual couples. “Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion (“American Gay Rights Movement,” n.d.). These political gains were major for gay men and lesbian women, yet a politics of exclusion remains evident, and the continued relevance of Pariah comments on this notion. That is, within the context of a politics of belonging, Pariah made a statement around Black lesbian female positionality and the ways in which non-White LGBTQ members attempted to expand their experiences beyond exclusionary political movements. Pariah demonstrated this lack of political inclusion and unification. Though the film had a small budget with mediocre success when compared to big-budget blockbuster films, Pariah being distributed by a major distribution and production company represented a challenge to the boundaries around the ways in which belonging operated across the LGBTQ community, even politically. Pariah effectively rejected the whitewashed norms of the gay rights movement. Black lesbian women were not a part of the exclusionary LGBTQ public political collective, but Pariah was there to challenge this exclusive political collective and affirm the Black lesbian experience. Alike, the main character of Pariah, was not concerned with same-sex marriage; she needed a sense of community, she needed shelter, and she needed resources as a teenager who was kicked out of her own home for being a lesbian. In the film’s closing scene, Alike choosing to find her place in the world by going off to UC Berkeley alone reminds viewers symbolically that Black lesbian women not only seek to find belonging in the ideals of the larger American landscape but also seek to find belonging within the LGBTQ community. Alike could only turn to her best friend for help when she needed it. There was no institution that provided Alike with the resources she needed to survive. Pariah is an expression of contestation of dominant American culture but also an act of struggle to find a place in the political discourse of the LGBTQ community. For Black lesbian women, exclusion is then a social phenomenon that brings solidarity to their community, through a history of struggle. Belonging is not just about a small community of like-minded people but

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about the fabric of a society, which extends across culture, politics, and history. IMPLICATIONS Applying cultural prism theory to the matrix of historical, cultural, and political impact moments that contextualize the production of the film Pariah against the backdrop of Yuval-Davis’s (2006) politics of belonging and my Black Queer Identity Matrix (2014) illuminates important notions related to this chapter’s research questions. This study has sought to answer the following questions: (1) How does the film Pariah challenge the boundaries of belonging as it relates to the LGTBQ community and the larger U.S. cultural landscape? and (2) How does the film Pariah reject the cultural norms of the gay rights movement? Political values are social constructs that can be exclusionary even across oppressed communities. As discussed throughout this chapter, the political affirmation of same-sex relationships excluded the nuanced issues faced by LGBTQ people of color, including Black lesbian women. Considering the historical trajectory in which Pariah is grounded, it is clear that there is a correspondence between social location (in this case, Black female lesbian) and axis of power, which works in conjunction with political values and shifts. According to Yuval-Davis (2006): A man or a woman, black or white, working-class or middle-class, a member of a European or an African nation: these are not just different categories of social location, but categories that also have a certain positionality along an axis of power, higher or lower than other such categories. Such positionalities, however, tend to be different in different historical contexts and are often fluid and contested. Some differences, as Sandra Harding and Nancy Fraser have commented, do not necessarily have differential power positionings but are only markers of different locations. This, again, can only be related to specific kinds of differences in particular historical moments and contexts. (p. 202)

Considering the matrix of influences in which Pariah is situated, there is continuity between the social location of Black lesbian women and the historical-cultural-political moments that work together as a value system that excludes Black women. Pariah attempted to redefine such boundaries. Black lesbian women were symbolically annihilated from the media visibility that White gays and lesbians enjoyed preceding, during, and after the premiere of Pariah in 2011. Through a cultural prism analysis, considering political, historical, and cultural impact moments, we see Pariah as a text that marks the struggle for inclusion and the necessity of inclusion as we consider the politics of belonging. The existence of the film on a major

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distribution platform and its success speaks back against the media industry’s cultural gatekeeping of Black lesbian existence. To further emphasize the intricacies of belonging and exclusion as it relates to queer intercultural communication dynamics, the integral assumptions of my Black Queer Identity Matrix (2014) offer some context here. QUEER INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND THE BLACK QUEER IDENTITY MATRIX I noted in Black Queer Identity Matrix that “sexual orientation and race exist primarily as social constructs” (Howard, 2014, p. 75); as such, the construction of the gay rights movement erased particular identities. Movements can be shaped by the strategic presentation of socially constructed categories, such as race, sexual orientation, and gender. Pariah challenged this limited construction of the gay rights movement by portraying the lived experiences of Black lesbian women. I further noted, “Struggle is the centerpiece of a Black queer conceptual framework because of the history of oppression within the Black community” (Howard, 2014, p. 75); thus Pariah served as a reminder of struggles specific to Black lesbian women that the culturalpolitical landscape attempted to erase. Though the gay rights movement has attempted to limit the multifarious iconographies of the LGBTQ community, Pariah cites the culture-centered dynamics of said community and acknowledges the interlocking ways in which race, class, sexual orientation, and gender operate to create unique experiences ignored by the gay rights movement. Black lesbian women are shaped and connected by a history of oppression, which shapes the communication patterns in which they develop in order to survive. As I previously observed (Howard, 2014), “Different social locations and social knowledges often produce distinct communication patterns” (p. 75). Pariah acted as a site of cultural resistance and a rejection of cultural norms by engaging with the communication-specific patterns of the Black lesbian community, such as the use of Black lesbian codes and coping mechanisms. These signifiers include but are not limited to the use of “AG” and “stud” to describe the distinct ways in which Black lesbian women tend to identify gender expression. In addition, Pariah delved into the intricacies of Black lesbian relationships and the ways in which gender is communicated within the community. Research into Black lesbian identity has shown that Black lesbians who are more masculine identified primarily date more feminine partners (see Moore, 2006; Howard, 2014). In addition, it is taboo in the Black lesbian community for two masculine identified lesbians to date one another, yet a relationship between two feminine Black lesbians is accepted. This is a product of the male gaze that Pariah was not afraid to address. Audiences are invited to see the use of clothing and aesthetic acces-

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sories as a communication pattern that empowers Alike. In one scene Alike overhears a girl at school say that Alike is not masculine enough, so she gets her best friend to buy her a dildo. Alike straps on the dildo and wears it to a nightclub. Alike is very uncomfortable with the strap-on. It makes her feel self-conscious, although she thought the dildo would make her feel more masculine or empowered. As such, masculinity is equated with power, but Pariah challenges this notion. Alike actually rejects this cultural norm by getting rid of the strap-on. Here Pariah makes a statement about gender roles and gender expression that rejects normative cultural narratives of masculinity, both inside and outside of the Black lesbian community. Alike is caught in between her mom’s desire to feminize her and the Black lesbian community’s cultural codes around masculinity. Being raised in a society with strict gender roles and performative gender norms, Alike is alienated as she struggles to find complete comfort in her own identity and gender expression. Alike, unable to find comfort in wearing the strap-on, throws it away. As the film progresses, we continue to see her empowered by making her own choices, free from normative gender roles both inside and outside of the Black lesbian community. As the film showcases the relationship between gender expression and Alike’s development of a healthy sense of self, there is a clear rejection of the cultural norms across the Black lesbian community. As Alike begins to shed notions of conforming to strict rules around masculinity and “stud” identity, she moves toward a sense of freedom. By the end of the film, Alike no longer feels uncomfortable in the clothes she wears. She is not confined to the feminine standards her mother imposed upon her, and she is not confined by the performative gender roles set forth by the Black lesbian community. According to Eguchi and Asante (2016), LGBTQ people of color have strategically developed intellectual, aesthetic, and political forms of intersectional identity performance to navigate interlocking oppressions such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism. The movie Pariah, as written and produced by Black lesbian women, reflects this notion. Thus, this study is in line with recent scholarship around gender performance and identity negotiation as processes that are shaped by social interactions and societal norms. This process of gender performance and identity negotiation that threads through the movie Pariah and drives Alike’s character development is a recurring theme in queer intercultural communication scholarship. Goffman (1959) introduces a sociological perspective of dramaturgy to talk about the presentation of identity as performance, which is useful in the evolution of intercultural communication research. Goffman (1959) believes that social actors have an ability to choose how to present who they are in interactions according to a particular setting. Goffman emphasizes the psychological processes that individuals use to deal with their personal experience of social norms and values to present who they are in interactions

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(Eguchi, 2011). I apply these constructs to Black lesbian identity here, through the lens of the character Alike. These dynamics that Alike struggled with shed light on the importance of such films being produced, written, and directed by members of the communities in which they are represented, reinforcing my previous statement (Howard, 2014) that “the Black lesbian female experience can be known only by attending to Black lesbian female interpretations of experience” (p. 75). This notion is pertinent in unpacking the ways in which Pariah challenged notions of belonging and rejected cultural norms. For queers of color, intercultural processes of assimilating into and/or resisting become sites of interlocking identity struggles (Eguchi, 2015). Ultimately, Alike is empowered when she embraces the expression of her gender that is most comfortable for her. Pariah ends with an empowering message for Black lesbian viewers, but it also affirms the intricacies of the Black lesbian experience. This is especially important when said community is historically, culturally, and politically repudiated. CONCLUSION This chapter illustrates how cultural prism theory can be a relevant methodological framework in unpacking queer intercultural communication dynamics as related to an examination of rhetorical artifacts and popular culture texts. By examining the politics of belonging and utilizing the culture-specific conceptual framework, my Black queer identity matrix, the chapter expands upon queer theory and the politics of belonging as pivotal aspects in unpacking queer intercultural communication dynamics. An exploration of the prism in which Pariah is grounded portrays a parallel across cultural, political, and historical moments that served to work in conjunction as a force of Black lesbian female exclusion. Expounding upon these impact moments sheds light on the importance of Pariah as a site of cultural, historical, and political resistance. According to Allan Bérubé, the gay community is overwhelmingly portrayed in the heterosexual mind as being “white and well-to-do” (2001, p. 234). Media images popular in television and film, such as Will and Grace, My Best Friend’s Wedding, In and Out, Queer as Folk, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, among others, promote a monolithic image of the gay community as being overwhelmingly upper-middle class—if not simply rich and White (Han, 2007). In 2011, Pariah refused to accept the erasure of Black lesbian women in the historical canon of American film. It also attempted to redefine the boundaries of belonging in terms of the strategic exclusion of Black lesbian women and the gay rights movement. Pariah shed light on the shortsightedness of the singleissue gay rights movement by addressing issues faced by communities across

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the lesbian and gay population, such as youth homelessness, abuse, religion in the Black community, and the struggle to find resources or support as a Black lesbian youth from a middle-class family. The gay rights movement had a very limited boundary of who could be seen and heard. Pariah acted as a rejection of the socially constructed boundaries of race, gender, class, and gender expression as it relates to Black lesbian visibility, the gay rights movement, and the larger American landscape. The salient themes unpacked throughout this chapter parallel the notion of Black lesbian females’ struggle to belong, which is inextricably linked to queer intercultural communication dynamics. The gay rights movement ignored Black lesbian women and people of color in its road to equality; thus the film Pariah reminds us that race, gender (as well as gender expression), and sexual orientation are interlocking systems of oppression. Pariah acts as commentary on the politics of gender expression and respectability politics as driving forces of homophobia within the home of Alike as she navigated her family life and her mother’s insistence on feminizing her. However, these same forces of respectability and gender expression were driving forces of the exclusion of Black lesbian women and people of color in mainstream visibility of the gay rights movement. Utilizing CPT, this chapter has expounded upon the ways in which the historical, cultural, and political moments run parallel to one another in the repudiation and denial of the Black lesbian female. Pariah challenged this denial of Black lesbian women and their experiences by exploding onto the film festival scene and eventually being distributed by a major distribution company. As the gay rights movement worked to negate the existence of Black lesbian women both politically and culturally, Pariah served to challenge this notion. Pariah will forever exist in the canon of American film history as an iconic marker of Black lesbian cultural resistance. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Why is it important to consider the historical, cultural, economic, and/ or political influences of a rhetorical artifact in any analysis of popular culture texts? 2. In what ways was the gay rights movement exclusionary? In what ways does/did the film Pariah reject the cultural norms of the gay rights movement? 3. Politics construct belonging in particular ways to particular collectivities (Yuval-Davis, 2006). What evidence is there in this chapter to support this claim? 4. What counternarrative does the film Pariah provide in terms of the gay rights movement and the larger American cultural landscape?

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5. How does Pariah attempt to redefine cultural norms, both inside and outside the gay and lesbian community? KEY WORDS • • • • • • •

Belonging Black Lesbian Queer Theory Black Queer Identity Intersectional Prism NOTES

1. In Black Queer Identity Matrix, I argue that Black lesbian women emulate a Black masculinity that is, in essence, reflective of an operative myth, which is demonstrative of the identity matrix in which Black lesbian women find themselves. Black men seek to emulate a White patriarchal archetype that has never been designed for them to live up to, and Black studs emulate this identity through rejection of femaleness and reinforcing masculine dominance. In the end, we have the phenomenon of the reproduction or redefining of White patriarchy and heterosexual relationships within the lesbian community as well as the privileging of masculinity. 2. Prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage, civil unions were legally recognized unions of same-sex couples, with rights similar to those of marriage.

REFERENCES American gay rights movement: A timeline. (n.d.). Infoplease. Retrieved from https://www. infoplease.com/us/gender-issues/american-gay-rights-movement-timeline Bérubé, A. (2001). How gay stays White and what kind of White it stays. In B. Brander Rasmussen, E. Klinenberg, I. J. Nexica, & M. Wray (Eds.), The making and unmaking of whiteness (pp. 234–265). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chávez, K. R. (2013). Pushing boundaries: Queer intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 83–95. The Color Purple theme of sexuality and sexual identity. (n.d.). Shmoop. Retrieved from https:/ /www.shmoop.com/color-purple/sexuality-sexual-identity-theme.html Cooper, N. (Producer), & Rees, D. (Director). (2011). Pariah [Motion picture]. United States: Focus Features. Eguchi, S. (2011). Cross-national identity transformation: Becoming a gay “Asian-American” man. Sexuality & Culture, 15(1), 19–40. Eguchi, S. (2015). Queer intercultural relationality: An autoethnography of Asian–Black (dis)connections in White gay America. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 8(1), 27–43. Eguchi, S., & Asante, G. (2016). Disidentifications revisited: Queer(y)ing intercultural communication theory. Communication Theory, 26(2), 171–189. Eguchi, S., Calafell, B. M., & Files-Thompson, N. (2014). Intersectionality and quare theory: Fantasizing African American men’s same-sex relationships in Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom. Communication, Culture, and Critique, 7(3), 371–389.

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Eng, D. L., Halberstam, J., & Muñoz, J. E. (2005). Introduction: What’s queer about queer studies now? Social Text, 23(3/4), 1–17. George, N. (2011, December 23). New directors flesh out Black America, all of it. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/movies/pariah-revealsanother-side-of-being-black-in-the-us.html Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books. Han, C. (2007). They don’t want to cruise your type: Gay men of color and the racial politics of exclusion. Social Identities, 13(1), 51–67. Howard, S. (2014). Black queer identity matrix: Towards an integrated queer of color framework. New York: Peter Lang. Howard, S. (2018). Situating Cyberzone: Black lesbian identity in comics. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 22(4), 1–13. Johnson, E. P. (2001). “Quare” studies or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Text and Performance Quarterly, 21(1), 1–25. Littleton, C. (2015). “Bessie” director Dee Rees on Bessie Smith’s ferocity and facing prejudice. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2015/tv/features/dee-rees-bessie-smithqueen-latifah-hbo-1201488009 Moore, M. (2006). Lipstick or Timberlands? Meanings of gender presentation in Black lesbian communities. Signs, 32(1), 113–139. Nolan, D., Burgin, A., Farquharson, K., & Marjoribanks, T. (2016). Media and the politics of belonging: Sudanese Australians, letters to the editor and the new integrationism. Patterns of Prejudice, 50(3), 253–275. Smith, T. W. (2011). Public attitudes toward homosexuality [Monograph]. Retrieved from http://www.norc.org/PDFs/2011%20GSS%20Reports/GSS_ Public%20Attitudes%20Toward%20Homosexuality_Sept2011.pdf Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214.

Chapter Twelve

Mobilizing Allies for Black Transgender Women Digital Stories, Intersectionality, and #SayHerName Nicole Files-Thompson and Melina McConatha

Trans people globally experience disproportionate rates of violence, abuse, and discrimination (Grant, Mottet, Tanis, Harrison, Herman, & Keisling, 2011). A closer look reveals that race, gender presentation, and economics intersect for Black transgender women, leading to even more deadly acts of violence (Brooks, 2016; Graham, 2014; National Center for Transgender Equality, 2014; National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2013; Balzer, Hutta, Adrian, Hyndal, & Stryker, 2012; Grant et al., 2011; Stotzer, 2009; Meyer, 2008). Trans communities have long utilized social media for support, mobilization, and resistance (De Ridder & Van Bauwel, 2013; Gorkemli, 2012; Paradis, 2009; Bryson, 2004). At the same time, Black transgender women celebrities and LGBT activists, such as Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, push back against antitrans rhetoric across media platforms, which has made crimes and injustices faced by Black transgender women more visible to mainstream digital media consumers (Mock, 2012). The zeitgeist of this visibility can be seen in social justice movements specific to state violence perpetrated against Black transgender women. In 2013, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi organized the Black Lives Matter movement in response to violence perpetrated against Black people in order to develop a community that was focused on “Blackcentered political will and movement building” (“Herstory,” n.d., para. 1). The movement’s hashtag #BlackLivesMatter quickly gained prominence across digital platforms and has opened spaces for social justice campaigns in multiple communities of color to gain traction. Since then, there has been 239

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increased visibility of movements that pinpoint racialized, sexualized, gendered violence broadly, including the violence against and lack of political protection of Black transgender women on social media campaigns connected to #BlackLivesMatter, such as #SayHerName. The #SayHerName campaign is an initiative of the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), cofounded by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), who introduced intersectionality as a means to more appropriately analyze the contours of phenomena within the criminal justice system. As a feminist framework, intersectionality aims to remove preconceived notions of gender politics to allow analysis to be framed outside of patriarchal and hegemonic notions of femininity. Black feminist intersectional inquiry allows power to be deconstructed among categorical hierarchies of oppression that “form mutually constructing features of social organization, which shape African-American experiences and, in turn, are shaped by African-Americans” (Collins, 2005, p. 9). Accordingly, Crenshaw & Ritchie (2015) argue that an intersectional, Black feminist perspective—one that recognizes that categories such as race, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation are not mutually exclusive—demands the inclusion of Black women and girls, transgender and not transgender, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual in the dominant discourse around police violence. When the lives of marginalized Black women are centered, a clearer picture of structural oppressions emerges. No analysis of state violence against Black bodies can be complete without including all Black bodies within its frame. (p. 30)

As part of an initiative by AAPF in conjunction with the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, Crenshaw and Ritchie (2015) produced the report #SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women as a guide to expand the analysis of police violence to include “gender specific forms and contexts” (p. 21). The report explicitly explores gender-specific state violence related to Black women, within which they state, in a footnote, “Our reference to Black women throughout this document includes cisgender, transgender and gender-nonconforming, lesbian, bisexual and queer women as well as women with disabilities” (Crenshaw & Ritchie, 2015, p. 34). As an intersectional reference for allies, arguing that “sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia place Black LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming people in a precarious position at the intersection of constructs around gender, race, and sexuality, fueling police violence against them” (p. 24) in expanding the context of state violence, for example, they explain that Black transgender women face alarming rates of profiling in prostitution-related offenses and are subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of police (Crenshaw & Ritchie, 2015). It is here that we as intersectional feminist queer researchers enter the examination of #SayHerName as a campaign designed to raise the critical consciousness, activism, and aware-

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ness of members within an intersectional feminist community. However, it is our specific examination of how #SayHerName engages its community to build allies for Black transgender women that illuminates a need for incorporating the more nuanced applications of critical intercultural communication theory building in the campaigns of intersectional activism. Within critical intercultural communication scholarship, intersectionality serves as a foundational framework in the development of more nuanced theoretical interrogations across intersectional oppressions because, as Eguchi & Asante (2016) have suggested, “Unspoken and unwritten dominations of heteronormativity remain as a major site of knowledge production in communication theory” (p. 171). The critical scholarship of queering, quaring, and transing take the functionality of intersectionality as a point of departure to both problematize and analytically expand “other bodies” in the nuanced interplay (and conflation) of gender and sexuality. Specifically, these approaches in queer, quare, and transgender studies are “theoretical and political moves that reflect the diversity of foci and interests as well as the politics and tensions in these areas of inquiry” (Yep, 2013, p. 119). We take “-ing” to refer to the process of making strange and unfamiliar social constructions plain and deconstructing underlying power relations to illuminate new directions in acts of resistance and epistemology (Yep, Russo, & Allen, 2015; Yep, 2013; Johnson, 2013). How, then, do we apply -ing to the allyship of intersectional activism? In our critical analysis, we explore how the intersectional Black feminist #SayHerName social media campaign mobilized existing anti-Black activist communities to increase visibility of violence against Black transgender women. It examines how the performative modes of intersectional allyship to transgender Black women affected by violence in digital storytelling shapes the mobilization of intercultural communities. Where “allyship is not an identity—it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalized individuals and/or groups of people” (The Anti-Oppression Network, n.d., para. 2; McKenzie, 2014)— it asks, How is trans womanhood performed and engaged in digital storytelling to make the narratives consumable for intersectional allies? We begin with a discussion of digital stories and community building in virtual spaces, quaring these spaces for Black trans women. We then historicize and politicize intersectionality in the context of Black activism to situate the #SayHerName campaign. We end with a discussion of how violence against Black trans women through the #SayHerName hashtag is an illustration of how trans womanhood is engaged to make the narratives consumable for hetero/ cisnormative audiences across social media platforms, and therefore situated within shareable content for a broader community of allies. As queer intersectional scholars we look to uncover power relations in allyship with Black

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trans women. By exploring these connections, we seek to -ing intersectionality. DIGITAL STORIES, COMMUNITY BUILDING, AND BLACK TRANS VISIBILITY Digital stories, content shared online in which narratives give voice, provide meaning, or share lived experiences, provide an opportunity for a more inclusive and accessible dialogue on social change. Online access delivers a space for individuals in communities to tell their stories, increase visibility in the injustices faced, and give a better representation of more positive experiences. Social media networks offer a space for many people in the trans community to share and support each other in the context of rapidly changing technological connections. Identity and advocacy are often tied to complex interactions and connections online shared through digital media (Eguchi, Files-Thompson, & Calafell, 2018; Mehra & Braquet, 2011; Ward, 2006). The introduction of online access among individuals in the trans community led to the possibility of sharing information about real experiences in the community, opening an avenue for support and empowerment. As a result, there has been a fuller and more accurate representation of the needs and strengths of transgender individuals and the trans community available. However, availability does not always translate to access broadly. Moreover, who is accessing the information and how the information becomes visible to them is a key consideration in the context of building a community of allies that attends to violence against Black transgender women within their social justice initiatives. McLuhan (1964) foreshadowed the significant role online connections would play in community mobilization when he predicted “global villages,” based on relationships and culture unrestricted by physical space (McConatha & DiGregorio, 2016). Transphobia, racism, and sexism experienced together lead to trans women of color being more susceptible to depression (Jefferson, Neilands, & Sevelius, 2013). However, virtual connections correlated positively with well-being and social support offline (Williams, 2016; McConatha & DiGregorio, 2016; Hampton, 2011; Quan-Haase & Wellman, 2004; Katz & Rice, 2002). Access to the Internet and spaces for virtual communication has been tied to increased feelings of connectedness (Mesch & Talmud, 2006; Quan-Haase & Wellman, 2004). While social networks can perpetuate these problems, they also create new, safe, and supportive spaces for many who lack support and acceptance in schools, families, or physical communities (McConatha & DiGregorio, 2016; Brown & Thomas, 2014). Digital stories provide a space for specific connections unique to an individual’s identity. People can search for online spaces that are specifically created

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and maintained solely by groups with shared identities—such as pages and resources from and for transgender women of color. Online identity construction can be safer, and through a variety of privacy controls, one may share in either a public or a private sphere (Vivienne & Burgess, 2012; Papacharissi, 2010). Increasingly, social media is bridging communication across boundaries of race, social class, ethnicity, age, gender, and sexual identities. Posting, texting, and blogging on social media platforms provide an accessible space for sharing unique experiences outside of physical boundaries (boyd, 2007). A digital story represents a space where one can connect with others in the trans community regardless of location. Social media plays a pivotal role for trans communities to challenge misrepresentations and stereotypes and promote a clearer understanding of how being trans does not translate to one singular experience or identity. Take, for example, Instagram-based Queer Appalachia, a platform calling for intersectional activism that centers a rural, southern U.S. perspective. As many people in the rural trans community rely on the Internet to connect, with more than 80,000 followers, Queer Appalachia’s mission to inspire a “bigger, more complicated, more joyful, and more profound conversation about race, class, gender, family, religion, loss, America, and queer homemaking and family building than are often not seen in media today” (McCabee, 2018, para. 5) creates a space where they can find community, support, and visibility. Activism centering trans women of color in rural, southern U.S. spaces is limited, yet online access to sites like Queer Appalachia create a space for mobilization and community building where historically trans people of color have been isolated. A digital story shared on the site by @Raaybees, a self-identified transgender person of color, gained nearly 10,000 likes. Sharing a picture of themselves, and noting the role of digital labor by transgender people of color in creating a more intersectional lens on community mobilization, they wrote, This body is trans and beautiful. Post-op or not fuck y’alls standards of what it means to be trans because half of y’all post-up folks still live with insecurity and judgment in your heart and you’ll only legitimize white trans folks that are post-op. It’s trans POC that are here to make a difference. (Raaybees, Queer Appalachia, 2018)

This digital story disrupts traditional constructs of beauty in demanding inclusivity for “other bodies” while illuminating a new direction. By providing a space for personal storytelling and advocacy, social media networks provide a tool in empowering, liberating, and supporting trans people (McConatha & DiGregorio, 2016; Miller, 2014). Providing a space for people to tie personal struggle to a collective identity-building resilience in communities, simple hashtags help to connect digi-

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tal stories on social media (DiFulvio, 2011). Hashtags also help make digital stories more accessible to a wider audience. With a simple search, one could gain a better understanding of the lived experiences of a community historically silenced in the media. Jackson, Bailey, and Foucault Welles (2018) explored the digital labor of women in the trans community positioning social media movements such as #GirlsLikeUs as a space for trans autonomy. Janet Mock (2012), a Black transgender woman, writer, producer, advocate, and director of Pose (2018), an FX series on trans women of color in which she explores, as a content creator, how feminists tackle stigma through storytelling, reflects on how the #GirlsLikeUs hashtag began and grew far beyond her: I shared quotes that touched me, articles that celebrated trans women, essays written by trans women, #FF women who inspired me, and took pictures with #girlslikeus who I call my friends and dear sisters. Then, I gave a speech at the University of Southern California which was a way for me to express the anger and frustration and hope that fueled my efforts over the past year of my living visibly. I got the chance to tell bits of the injustice CeCe McDonald faced. I got to talk about how Paige Clay’s end could’ve easily been—and can still be—mine. . . . I shared that speech on YouTube and spoke out against the New York Times’ sexist and transphobic depiction of Lorena Escalera, and then, remarkably a few outlets used their platform to amplify the collective voices of #girlslikeus (Bitch Media, Feministing, Fuck Yeah Feminists, GLAAD, TransGriot, WildGender), and my dream came true: #girlslikeus was used. #girlslikeus was used on its own without my @janetmock handle in it. It had a life of its own. Intimate, frivolous, deep and vain conversations were being had, women were connecting to one another, finding sisterhood and friendship. (2012, para. 10)

Mock’s account of the power of a hashtag began with simply sharing the digital stories of transgender women of color. The digital stories of Black trans women were displayed in essays and pictures online, illustrating how one hashtag can represent many people and many experiences. The hashtag categorizes a digital story in a language that can be shared by trans allies. In addition, the hashtag began by trans women of color tying together stories told by trans women of color. Trans allies then, in turn, use the hashtag as a tool to help share and disseminate the message. The sharing of digital stories can inform individuals and institutions of the need for change at the micro and macro levels. For example, Laverne Cox, an Emmy Award–winning advocate and leader in the trans community, shared on her Instagram a reaction to a murdered transgender woman being deadnamed (Chiu, 2018). Deadnaming refers to misgendering and referring to an individual by an abandoned birth name. Cox shared her fears and her thoughts of contemplating her own suicide:

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Being misgendered and deadnamed in my death felt like it would be the ultimate insult to the psychological and emotional injuries I was experiencing daily as a black trans woman in New York City, the injuries that made me want to take my own life. (as cited in Chiu, 2018, para. 6)

A testament to increased visibility in media, Cox’s celebrity led to her reaction to the murder and then to physical and emotional violence against trans women being reported widely, including by mainstream media outlets. Cox’s reaction, in addition to many other people in the trans community sharing the harmful if not deadly results of deadnaming, created a shift in media protocol. That led to recommendations in mainstream media outlet style guides for reporters not to make their subjects’ gender identity invisible when covering the trans community (GLAAD, n.d.). BLACK TRANS VISIBILITY, VIOLENCE, AND INTERSECTIONAL ACTIVISM The momentous Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and its corresponding social media campaign sharing digital stories with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, made hypervisible the stories of violence against Black men, in particular those killed by police. In a case study of college students, Cox (2017) explored how they gathered their information about the Black Lives Matter movement from social media. Titled “Herstory” (n.d.), the first section of the BLM “About” page explains that the movement was begun in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a civilian who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, and details its intersectionality and “affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression” (para. 3). However, Cox (2017) found the students largely understood #BlackLivesMatter to be about police brutality, with the majority of students not discussing the broader goals of the movement “to give voice to individuals traditionally left out of Black liberation movements—including black women as well as queer, transgender, disabled, and undocumented black peoples,” or that the movement was founded by three Black queer women (p. 1851). Vivienne (2011) positions digital storytelling as a transformative form of activism for the trans community, as a digital story not only provides a space for people to speak their own stories but serves to educate others on discrimination and speak across differences in a digital language (Vivienne & Burgess, 2012). In order to disrupt the continuous news cycle, which quickly moves from one crisis to another, BlackGirlTragic.com shares digital stories in order to spotlight patterns of violence that affect women of color throughout the diaspora (“About,” n.d.). As an inclusive platform, its stories serve to illuminate the plight of Black women, including trans women. For example, the site posted the story of Dana Mar-

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tin, a Black transgender woman and active advocate in the transgender community, murdered in rural Alabama. Calling for transgender inclusivity, visibility, and advocacy in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the story was shared on Instagram, quoting local officials on the alarming and disproportionate rates of homicide for trans people of color with the hashtags #whoelsebutus, #stopkillingus, #blacklivesmatter, #respectblackwomen, #blackwomenmatter, #blackgirlsmatter, #blackgirl, #blackwomen, #blackgirls, #blackwoman, #Danamartin, #stopshootingus, #blackgirltragic, and #blackgirlmagic (“About,” n.d.). Intersectional identities are often unifying factors for groups marginalized within social movements; #SayHerName’s intersectional activism framework came at the behest of a need for increased visibility for Black women in the larger Black Lives Matter movement (Brown, Ray, Summers, & Fraistat, 2017; Terriquez, 2015). Crenshaw and Ritchie (2015) noted, “Along with cisgender and heterosexual Black women, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender-nonconforming Black women have been largely absent from the discourse around racist state violence” (p. 24). In the #SayHerName campaign, Crenshaw sought to connect and make hypervisible the digital stories of Black women who were victims of state violence (Kaheeli, 2016). Initially a campaign in response to instances of state violence such as the case of Sandra Bland, #SayHerName grew to include the circulation of digital stories of all violence against all Black women, including Black transgendered women. Elevating the labor of Black women as activists and citizen journalists, herself included, Brown (2016) concludes that this work is “subverting the barriers of traditional institutions of media and journalism through the use of digital technology” (para. 6). Noting that a search of #SayHerName yielded stories of more than 20 transgender Black women, she added that they “are memorialized as a labor of love by Black women who see themselves as capable of making change by taking their message to the digital sphere” (Brown, 2016, para. 6). #SayHerName joined with #BlackLivesMatter on initiatives to engage the broader activist community. Acknowledging that “our communities sometimes recreate systems of oppression,” Crenshaw and Ritchie (2015) realized the critical need for spaces “created to discuss the ways in which patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia impact Black communities as a whole, and to hold individuals and organizations accountable” (p. 30). The organizing factor of both #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName is violence. The social construction of Black men as aggressors and Black women as property, and both therefore deserving of violence and/or no sympathy when victimized, is a connective thread for anti-Black social justice activists (Brown et al., 2017; Collins, 2005). A familiar trope, violence unites the overlapping audiences for the two campaigns and situates the agenda of #SayHerName within a larger context.

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The Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC) released A Time to Act: Fatal Violence against Transgender People in America, reporting 2017 as the “deadliest” on record in the trans community. them, an online community featuring and celebrating the voices of people in the LGBTQ community, reflects on the implications of these reports: Trans populations are not deemed important enough to track by civic institutions, so there are no available studies or statistics around this empathy gap that makes it easier for the general public to pay more attention to cisgender victims, and white over Black. This is why the term “deadliest year on record” is not only sensationalizing, but also factually inaccurate. Given that the U.S. Census doesn’t track trans people. (Talusan, 2018)

Similar to the dearth of data tracking of trans populations due to structural bias is the lack of available data tracking to accurately assess whether there is an actual uptick of state violence against Black people. However, “sensationalizing” police violence against Black people has been a key strategy of #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName in that the sharing of egregious acts of violence, abuse, and harassment through digital stories draws the attention of audiences, which creates a snowball effect. Driven by trending topics, these stories are often picked up by mainstream media outlets precisely because of collective outrage shared through these hashtags. The act of telling stories can lead to these psychological connections through finding shared meanings in a story regardless of one’s group identity (Davis, 2002). A connection of shared meaning, the underreporting/sharing of undue and alarming acts of violence, draws the attention of audiences from these hashtag campaigns to violence against Black trans women. The inclusion of Black trans women in digital stories shared through #SayHerName also works toward closing the “empathy gap.” The mainstreaming utility of #SayHerName can be viewed through Williams’s (2016) conclusion that “because the activism is digital, these ideas about the injustices that black transgender women face can be communicated to a wide audience who can spread this information on social networks. #SayHerName is a tool to tell the story of violence against black women while circumventing traditional media barriers” (p. 925). The hashtag itself started the community, and this established community’s ecological system grew to include the LGBT community and its allies. Collective action against violence, then, becomes a comfortable segue for audiences to participate in activism inclusive of Black trans women. #SayHerName does not ask for activism on behalf of trans women’s pursuit of general social justice. It asks for trans women to be included in the pursuit of social justice for Black women in general. Where #BlackLivesMatter, Black trans women’s lives matter too. Where we #SayHerName, we include Black trans women’s names too.

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Mainstream media, however, only sparingly supports diverse gender expressions in the physical and virtual worlds, categorizing trans identities as “abnormal” and consequently treating them as subordinate (Butler, 1999). The subtle and overt policing of these gender norms in our society by the media sets the stage for the continuation of violence. Researchers posit that when a psychological connection takes place between the self and a movement, one is more likely to become an ally (Thomas & Louis, 2014; Russell, 2011; Louis, 2009). Unlike Mock’s #GirlsLikeUs campaign that highlights differences in womanhood, #SayHerName highlights sameness in Black womanhood—inclusive of trans womanhood through the perpetration of violence. “Her” is monumentally important to this sameness and getting a buyin of the correct gender pronouns when referring to trans women for audiences participating in this social justice movement. Considering #SayHerName as a form of Black feminist activism in the virtual sphere, Brown et al. (2017) argue that instead of representing a “uniquely intersectional movement . . . #SayHerName makes intersectional mobilization part of its agenda with affirmations of commitment to issues of members of many subgroups within Black identity including women, LGTBQ, disabled, and trans groups” (pp. 1833–1834). In their study of tweets collected in 2016, they found that 12% of tweets referenced transgender (p. 1840). Blackfeminisms.com (Brown, 2016) reported that independent media sources like Black Girl Tragic were the primary force in tying trans women of color to the #SayHerName hashtag movement when more traditional forms of media had failed to reorganize or acknowledge the lives of Black trans women at all. Perception, or making sense of the world around us, consists of a threestep process: selective attention, selective organization, and selective interpretation. Selective attention allows us to use our existing culture to discern which cues we will use to interpret our environment. Attention is paid specifically to the cues that both match and differ from our own identities, as well as those particular cues that will serve our specific purpose (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2012). #SayHerName is not disruptive in that it does not avail audiences of the opportunity to interpret difference in victimization. When a digital story is shared with the #SayHerName hashtag, it is inherently implied that this is the story of violence against a Black woman. The process of selective organization and labeling uses one’s existing culture and language to assess the relevance of environmental cues, and in the absence of cues, it uses existing assumptions to fill in the gaps (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2012). Where historically the African American community has been slow to embrace LGBTQ visibility within social movements, this campaign has already reconciled intersectional identities (Eguchi et al., 2018). It firmly situates Black womanhood and, by extension, Black trans women as party to that

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womanhood. Further, it calls for humanizing and collective action and policy change against all Black women. #SAYHERNAME: BUILDING BRIDGES Mizock and Page (2016) define the position of an ally as one who (1) works toward support and resource access, (2) has an awareness of their privilege, and (3) acknowledges their power as it relates to their position outside of the group one is advocating for at the time. Via the AAPF and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies #SayHerName report, Crenshaw and Ritchie (2015) provide a helpful narrative for allies to apply these three tenets to the #SayHerName report. For allies, the report works, first, to increase support and resources through a trans-inclusive lens. The report provides accessible research and data that are not typically found in transphobic mainstream sources. As Crenshaw and Ritchie assert, most narratives relating to state violence in communities of color are “exclusively male experiences,” which “lead researchers, the media, and advocates to exclude” women of color (p. 4). The report includes explicit policy directives such as asking police departments to end discriminatory policies of deadnaming and misgendering by “explicitly banning officers from searching people to assign gender based on anatomical features, and requiring officers to respect gender identity and expression in all police interactions, searches, and placements in police custody” (Crenshaw & Ritchie, 2015, p. 31). Second, the #SayHerName report calls for inclusive conversations on privilege to “hold individuals and organizations accountable for addressing how our communities sometimes recreate systems of oppression” (p. 30). It is essential for an ally to listen and participate in these honest conversations regarding one’s place in these systems. Allies must recognize how one’s race, gender, and sexuality provide access to economic resources, education, policy protections, freedom from violence from the state, and representation in mainstream media. Finally, these conversations must inform one’s awareness of power. The #SayHerName report demands a reconceptualization of the “multiplicity of ways in which state violence affects all Black women and girls” and includes transgender women (p. 30). Crenshaw and Ritchie (2015) note that “Black women have consistently played a leadership role in struggles against state violence—from the Underground Railroad to the antilynching movement to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements to the current Black Lives Matter movement” (p. 9). It is important for allies to give visibility to the current and historical power Black women have had in social movements. The #SayHerName report calls for demonstrations, boycotts, and vigils to provide visibility and trans inclusivity in these movements. However, allies must recognize how their race, gender, or sexuality may

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contribute to a safer participation or protest. This can be illustrated in the ability for most White people to congregate peacefully to protest without threats of violence. Beyond the work of Crenshaw’s AAPF, #SayHerName is being used to mobilize action both on- and offline by many social justice activists and organizations. Take, for example, a 2018 Women’s Empowerment Network event post highlighting the employment of #SayHerName to bring to the forefront violence against Black trans women and to invite participation of allies. In sharing the digital story of Sasha Wall, it speaks to not only her murder but also violence and abuse at the hands of the state. The event titled “#SayHerName: A Vigil Honoring Sasha” says, On Sunday April 1st, 2018, Sasha Wall became South Carolina’s first-known transgender homicide victim, taken away from us too soon in what could only be described as a brutal hate crime. Since 2013 when the Human Rights Campaign began documenting this silent epidemic, 113 incidents have been identified and indexed. Trans women continue to be the major target of these hate crime inspired homicides and the Black trans community is being affected by this epidemic most intensely. Sasha Wall’s killing made her South Carolina’s first victim, the 8th victim for the year, and the 2nd victim in the South within the span of 5 days. But as we’ve seen with a number of these homicides, the cycle of violence does not simply end with the incident at hand. It is often institutionalized, then further perpetuated by transphobic reporting in the media. Sasha was misgendered by County Sheriff Jay Brooks who was quoted referring to her as a “he,” and other local reports further compounded his derogatory behavior, the most grotesque of which labeled Sasha as a “cross dresser,” who was found “wearing makeup and women’s clothing.” We are organizing this vigil as a way to affirm Sasha’s womanhood, honor her life, and raise awareness about the trans homicide epidemic plaguing the American South. Please come out and show your support for Sasha Wall and South Carolina’s Black Trans community. (Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network, 2018)

The three components of Mizock and Page’s (2016) framework for an intersectional approach to being an ally can be viewed in Sasha Wall’s vigil. In its call to action, the post specifically identifies, first, the support and resources needed for change: calling for affirmation in Sasha’s womanhood and rejecting and challenging deadnaming and misgendering in the media. The post also discusses the alarming rate of trans women as victims of hate crimes in the #SayHerName post. The Southern Poverty Law Center (2017) suggests people’s responses to these hate crimes can create “an opportunity for a community’s first dialogue on race, gender identity, or religious intolerance.” Calling on the community to come out and affirm Sasha’s life and womanhood as well as to support the trans community, Sasha’s vigil provides a physical and virtual space where one can participate in these in-

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formed conversations relating to intolerance in the context of one’s privileges of race, gender, and sexuality. Second, this discourse should include how often one’s gender plays a role in one’s interactions with the state and what privileges would be at stake if the state failed to acknowledge an ally’s gender identity—such as the life of Sasha Wall. Finally, one must recognize positions of power in the ally role when participating and sharing narratives like Sasha Wall’s vigil. An ally must be informed of the power of visibility. Trans women of color are silenced in physical and virtual spaces. Allies must educate themselves on how their own visibility in families, communities, educational systems, the state, and the media all contribute to positions of power in their own lives and how to best use this power to call for a more inclusive and representative narrative. ING-ING INTERSECTIONALITY: MORE WORK TO BE DONE As the mother of intersectionality, it is fitting that Crenshaw developed the hashtag campaign #SayHerName as a means to center Black women within the larger social justice movement against state violence, with an eye toward inclusivity, to the inclusion of Black transgender women. Online communities represent a key means of social engagement and have the ability to move from online to offline action for LGBTQ+ communities (Muller, 2012). #SayHerName builds bridges to allies as a resource that organizes digital stories on social media through its hashtag campaign, and as a resource for policy change through its research on violence against Black transgender women. However, our cultural conditioning process always shapes our perception, and heteronormativity and cisgender culture pervade all aspects of life (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2012; Lott, 2010). Johnson (2013) explains: If one’s sex identity matches her/his morphology, then s/he is cissexual. If one’s gender identity aligns with sex morphology, s/he is said to be cisgender. These definitions emphasize that sex and gender are most frequently identified in relationship to a stable and socially binding center, when, in fact, the categories of sex and gender are constructed and performed. . . . Cisgender privilege is given to persons whose morphology aligns with socially-sanctioned gender categories. (p. 138)

Growing spaces for trans sharing online can provide opportunities for advocacy in safer spaces free of cisgendered limits (McConatha & DiGregorio, 2016; De Ridder & Van Bauwel, 2013). Yet #SayHerName’s very specific inclusion of Black “transgender women” is problematized by its ability to be exclusionary and simultaneously upholding the “dominant cultural assumption that gender is invariant” (Johnson, 2013, p. 137) in addition to neglect-

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ing to unpack the complicated relationship that people of color have to the term transgender in its connection to whiteness and gender binaries. In the same way whiteness is invisible in dominant cultural articulations of race, cissex/cisgender is invisible in the report’s articulation of Black women’s digital stories. In this way, cisprivilege is an inherent supposition. On the landing page for #SayHerName, the initiative is described as “a movement that calls attention to police violence against Black women, girls and femmes, and demands that their stories be integrated into calls for justice, policy responses to police violence, and media representations of police brutality” (“#SayHerName,” n.d.). The use of the word “femme” is not used again on the initiative’s “About the Campaign,” “The Report,” “Mothers Network,” and “Resources” pages, which are linked from the landing page. Furthermore, the #SayHerName report (n.d.) does not use the term “femme” at all. Thus those seeking information and resources for being allies are left to leave the word “femme” to their own interpretation, or beg the question, What is meant by “femme”? With the wealth of information and resources offered by the initiative, including definitions given in the report to both understand the intersectional framework and articulate as allies, there is no definition of “femme.” As “allyship is an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalized group of people,” it is important to examine the implications of cis/heteroprivilege within #SayHerName as a tool for intersectional allyship. In the article “Why the Popular Phrase ‘Women and Femmes’ Makes No Sense,” Boom (2018) argues, First, the most glaring issue is that women and femmes belong to two different categories of identity. Woman is a description of one’s gender identity, whereas femme is a description of one’s gender expression. Someone can be a femme woman or a femme nonbinary person. But someone cannot just be a femme. Femme is an add-on, a further explanation of one’s gendered existence in the world. It doesn’t make any sense to discuss women and femmes as a coherent and cogent category because they’re expressions of fundamentally different principles. There is no situation I can think of in which “women and femmes” can be usefully employed to refer to a class of people who inherently share something specific by way of gendered experience.

With the attempt to shorthand inclusivity on the landing page of #SayHerName comes the reproduction of hetero/cisnormative privilege. “Femme” has historically been used to describe those who identify as lesbians or bisexual cisgender women with a feminine gender expression; however, “femme” describes a distinct gender identity/expression/presentation and does not automatically mean that person identifies as a woman (Blair & Hoskin, 2015). Crenshaw and Ritchie (2015) end the report with discussion ques-

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tions; one of them reads, “Say Her Name articulated several frames to expand our analysis of state violence to include Black women and gender-nonconforming Black people. What frames and/or individual stories from Say Her Name stood out most to you and why?” (p. 32). However, there is only one story in the report where “gender-nonconforming” is used. Equally problematic and underdeveloped as the use of the word “femme” is the story of the “New Jersey 7,” described as “a group of 7 lesbian and gender-nonconforming women” (Crenshaw & Ritchie, 2015, p. 25) who were arrested and went to trial for a “gang assault” after defending themselves against an attack by a man. Situated within queer intercultural communication studies, the performative modes of intersectional allyship in #SayHerName as a campaign and resource, then, can be viewed as a social justice product for consumption by cis/heteronormative audiences. #SayHerName is an illustration of how a digital story can be shared, made visible, organized, and interpreted through a campaign of intersectional activism. Though it increases representation and visibility by including the digital stories of Black women who are often invisible in social justice campaigns, in some instances it reinforces precisely those “dominant discursive constructions” that Yep (2013) argues make necessary queering, quaring, and transing as analytical tools to unpack and deconstruct “cultural systems of normativity” (p. 120). Intersectionality and #SayHerName are problematized with the pervasiveness of cisgender/heteronormative binaries within the intercultural communities that it mobilizes. #SayHerName is imperfect and reflects the implications of imperfection within intercultural communication scholarship. While inclusion and representation increase visibility, to disrupt normativity embedded within intersecting oppressions, there is a need for deeper elaboration and nuance. In ing-ing intersectionality, intersectional allies can go beyond saying her name. By queering/quaring/transing intersectionality, socially sanctioned gender categories reflected in intersectional activism—those that can leave behind peoples that are disempowered by gendered power relations—can be unpacked to make the activism and allyship more productive in dismantling systems of oppression. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Reflecting on what it means to be an ally and building intersectional bridges, consider the following questions: 1. What are the strengths of the #SayHerName campaign in building bridges toward trans inclusivity? 2. What other social justice campaigns could employ intersectionality to invite transgender inclusivity in a broader community of activism?

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3. There is much debate regarding the utility of hashtag activism. What hashtag campaigns can you use to take an affirmative position on hashtag activism? 4. The Trans Women of Color Collective (TWOCC) is an organization dedicated to “uplifting the narratives, leadership, and lived experiences of trans people of color.” Visit the TWOCC’s “Our Work” page at https://www.twocc.us/media to view digital stories by trans women of color and their allies and consider the following questions: a. What supports or resources could one provide to the person sharing this story? b. What is a privilege that exists as an ally that is important to recognize when providing these supports or resources? c. How does the access to these supports or resources relate to positions of power? d. What are three identities that you claim that may lead to these positions of power? KEY WORDS • • • •

Intersectionality #SayHerName Allyship Black Trans Women REFERENCES

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Brown, M. (2016). #SayHerName: How women of color memorialize transgender victims of violence. Retrieved from https://www.blackfeminisms.com/transgender. Brown, M., Ray, R., Summers, E., & Fraistat, N. (2017). #SayHerName: A case study of intersectional social media activism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(11), 1831–1846. 10. 1080/01419870.2017.1334934. Bryson, M. (2004). When Jill jacks in: Queer women and the net. Feminist Media Studies, 4(3), 239–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468077042000309928. Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Chiu, A. (2018, August 13). Laverne Cox lambastes “deadnaming.” What is it and why is it a problem? Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ morning-mix/wp/2018/08/14/laverne-cox-lambastes-deadnaming-what-is-it-and-why-is-ita-problem/?utm_term=.50c43c4fea0f. Collins, P. H. (2005). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge. Cox, J. M. (2017). The source of a movement: Making the case for social media as an informational source using Black Lives Matter. Ethnic Studies, 40(11), 1847–1854. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299. Crenshaw, K. W., & Ritchie, A. J. (2015). Say her name: Resisting police brutality against Black women. African American Policy Forum and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. Retrieved from http://static1.squarespace.com/static/ 53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/560c068ee4b0af26f72741df/1443628686535/AAPF_SMN_ Brief_Full_singles-min.pdf. Davis, J. (2002). Stories of change: Narrative and social movements. New York: State University of New York Press. De Ridder, S., & Van Bauwel, S. (2013). Commenting on pictures: Teens negotiating gender and sexualities on social networking sites. Sexualities, 16(5–6), 565–586. DiFulvio, G. (2011). Sexual minority youth, social connection and resilience: From personal struggle to collective identity. Social Science & Medicine, 72(10), 1611–1617. Eguchi, S., & Asante, G. (2016). Disidentifications revisited: Queer(y)ing intercultural communication theory. Communication Theory, 26, 171–189. Eguchi, S., Files-Thompson, N., & Calafell, B. M. (2018). Queer (of color) aesthetics: Fleeting moments of transgression in VH1’s Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood season 2. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 35(2), 180–193. GLAAD. (n.d.). GLAAD media reference guide—in focus: Covering the transgender community. Retrieved from https://www.glaad.org/reference/covering-trans-community. Gorkemli, S. (2012). Coming out of the Internet: Lesbian and gay activism and the Internet as a “digital closet” in Turkey. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 8(3), 63–88. https://doi. org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.8.3.63. Graham, L. F. (2014) Navigating community institutions: Black transgender women’s experiences in schools, the criminal justice system, and churches. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 11(4), 274–287. Grant, J., Mottet, L., Tanis, J. E., Harrison, J., Herman. J., & Keisling, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the national transgender discrimination survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality. Hampton, K. N. (2011). Comparing bonding and bridging ties for democratic engagement: Everyday use of communication technologies within social networks for civic and civil behaviors. Information, Communication & Society, 14(4), 510–528. Herstory. (n.d.). Black Lives Matter. Retrieved from https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/ herstory. Jackson, S. J., Bailey, M., & Foucault Welles, B. (2018). #GirlsLikeUs: Trans advocacy and community building online. New Media & Society 2018, 20(5), 1868–1888. Jefferson, K., Neilands, T. B., & Sevelius, J. (2013). Transgender women of color: Discrimination and depression symptoms. Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care, 6(4), 121–136.

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Johnson, J. R. (2013). Cisgender privilege, intersectionality, and the criminalization of CeCe McDonald: Why intercultural communication needs transgender studies. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 135–144. Kaheeli, H. (2016). #SayHerName: Why Kimberlé Crenshaw is fighting for forgotten women. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/30/ sayhername-why-kimberle-crenshaw-is-fighting-for-forgotten-women. Katz, J. E., & Rice, R. E. (2002). Social consequences of Internet use: Access, involvement, and interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lott, B. (2010). Multiculturalism and diversity: A social psychological perspective. Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Louis, W. (2009). Collective action—and then what? Journal of Social Issues, 65(4), 727–748. McCabee, T. P. (2018). Instagram account uncovers the vibrant queer culture of the south. Retrieved from https://www.them.us/story/queer-appalachia-instagram. McConatha, M., & DiGregorio, N. (2016). Supporting diversity. International Journal of Diverse Identities, 16(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-7866/CGP/v16i01/1-18. McKenzie, M. (2014). Black girl dangerous on race, queerness, class and gender. Oakland, CA: BGD Press. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw Hill. Mehra, B., & Braquet, D. (2011). Progressive LGBTQ reference: Coming out in the 21st century. References Service Review, 39(3), 343–354. https://doi.org/10.1108/ 00907321111161403. Mesch, G., & Talmud, I. (2006). The quality of online and offline relationships: The role of multiplexity and duration of social relationships. The Information Society, 22(3), 137–148. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972240600677805. Meyer, D. (2008). Interpreting and experiencing anti-queer violence: Race, class, and gender differences among LGBT hate crime victims. Race, Gender & Class, 15(3/4), 262–282. Miller, K. (2014). Feminism online: A beginning roadmap. Women & Language, 37(2), 71–73. Mizock, L., & Page, K. (2016). Evaluating the ally role: Contributions, limitations, and the activist position in counseling and psychology. Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology, 31(8), 17–33. Mock, J. (2012). My journey (so far) with #GirlsLikeUs: Hoping for sisterhood, solidarity & empowerment. Retrieved from https://janetmock.com/2012/05/28/twitter-girlslikeuscampaign-for-trans-women. Muller, A. (2012). Virtual communities and translation into physical reality in the “It Gets Better” project. Journal of Media Practice, 12(3), 269–277. Retrieved from https://doi.org/ 10.1386/jmpr.12.3.269_1. National Center for Transgender Equality. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.transequality. org. National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. (2013). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected hate violence in 2012. New York: NCAVP. Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Paradis, E. (2009). Bodies, boxes, and belonging: A review of queer online. Journal of LGBT Youth, 6(4), 446. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361650903296445. Quan-Haase, A., & Wellman, B. (2004). How does the Internet affect social capital? In M. Huysman & V. Wulf (Eds.), Social capital and information technology (pp. 113–135). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Raaybees [@queerappalachia]. (2018, September 9). [Photograph of Raei Bridges]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/BnhiVgigGkN. Russell, G. M. (2011). Motives of heterosexual allies in collective action for equality. Journal of Social Issues, 67(2), 376–393. #SayHerName x #InHerHonor. (n.d.). Black Lives Matter/Say Her Name. Retrieved from http:/ /sayhername.blacklivesmatter.com. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2017). Ten ways to fight hate: A community response guide, the intelligence project. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_ files/downloads/publication/ten_ways_to_fight_hate_2010.pdf.

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Stotzer, R. L. (2009). Violence against transgender people: A review of United States data. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14(3), 170–179. Talusan, M. (2018). What the media gets wrong about trans murders. Retrieved from https:// www.them.us/story/what-the-media-gets-wrong-about-trans-murders. Terriquez, V. (2015). Intersectional mobilization, social movement spillover, and queer youth leadership in the immigrant rights movement. Social Problems, 62(3), 343–362. Thomas, E., & Louis, W. (2014). When will collective action be effective? Violent and nonviolent protests differentially influence perceptions of legitimacy and efficacy among sympathizers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(2), 263–276. Ting-Toomey, S., & Chung, L. C. (2012). Understanding intercultural communication. New York: Oxford. Vivienne, S. (2011). Trans digital storytelling: Everyday activism, mutable identity and the problem of visibility. Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review, 7(1), 43–54. Vivienne, S., & Burgess, J. (2012). The digital storyteller’s stage: Queer everyday activists negotiating privacy and publicness. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56, 362–377. Ward, M. H. (2006). Thoughts on blogging as an ethnographic tool. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Ascilite Conference: Who’s learning? Whose technology? Retrieved from http:// www.ascilite.org/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p164.pdf. Williams, S. (2016). #SayHerName: Using digital activism to document violence against Black women. Feminist Media Studies, 16(5), 922–925. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016. 1213574. Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network. (2018). #SayHerName: A vigil honoring Sasha Wall & Black trans homicide victims [Event post]. Retrieved from https://www.scwren.org/ events/sayhername-a-vigil-honoring-sasha-wall-black-trans-homicide-victims. Yep, G. A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 118–126. Yep, G. A., Russo, S. E., & Allen, J. (2015). Intercultural communication: Pushing boundaries: Toward the development of a model for transing communication in (inter)cultural contexts. In L. G. Spencer & J. C. Capuzza (Eds.), Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories (pp. 69–89). Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Chapter Thirteen

Dialoguing about the Nexus of Queer Studies and Intercultural Communication Bernadette Marie Calafell and Thomas K. Nakayama

Perhaps a way for us to start is by defining how each of us understands or defines queer. Bernadette: For me queerness is always explicitly tied to race, class, gender, nationality, and ability. It’s intersectional and it’s critical. Queerness is always about the body and embodiment. I say all of these things because in many ways, I define queerness by what it is not yet (Calafell & Eguchi, in press). My understanding and feeling of queerness are influenced by Cherríe Moraga (1983) and Jose Esteban Muñoz (2009). Muñoz (2009) is known for writing about queerness on the horizon, or that we are not yet queer. In some ways, he wants to further unsettle what has become ironically the hegemonic understanding of queerness, which is connected to White, gay, male disembodiment. His work is influenced by queer feminists of color like Moraga (1983). When you read her work, you feel the presence of her body. This is central to queerness for me—laying bare the politics of racial embodiment. Queerness is also about possibility. Again, Muñoz (2009) is instructive here for me, specifically his work on hope and queer utopias. Perhaps it’s because he is a performance scholar that further draws me to his work. But the sense of possibility his work offers is explicitly tied to the possibilities of performance and the ability to re-perform, disidentify, or perform resistance. Performance makes the body present, and the racialized body holds queerness accountable to issues of power. 259

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My entrance into queer theory came from queer Chicana feminists like Cherríe Moraga (1983) and Gloria Anzaldúa (1987). As someone who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and attended college in the 1990s, I knew about Queer Nation and such. I knew I wasn’t straight, but I didn’t quite know where I fit. It wasn’t until I read Moraga’s (1983) Loving in the War Years that I finally felt a sense of place. The familiarity of her story resonated with me. I connected with the way she talked about her family and her experiences as a Chicana who benefited from White privilege. She understood her Chicana identity through her queerness, whereas for me I understood my queerness through my identity as a Chicana. Like Moraga (1983), for me queerness was always about everyday experiences and performances of identities: those everyday lived experiences and actions that allow us to thrive, survive, and resist. I guess you could say my connection to queerness was through Chicana feminism, which essentially was a precursor to what we now call queer of color theory. Chicana feminist theory is queer of color theory. Given the connection between queer and feminist theories, I don’t think you can really consider yourself a feminist or a queer theorist unless you are committed to transfeminisms. Tom: For me, queer emerges at a specific historical moment. On the academic side, it led to the rise of queer theory and queer studies, which are academic enterprises aimed at disrupting the ways that sexualities had been conceived. In particular, queer scholars challenged more static notions of “homosexual” or “gay” as relatively fixed and focused on gay White men. On the activist side, Queer Nation and queer nationals arose to make change to the contemporary situation of sexualities. They felt that the leading activist organizations at that time were too focused on HIV/AIDS activism and wanted to expand the activist goals to challenge “the continued existence of anti-gay discrimination in the culture at large” (“Our History,” n.d.). Many queer nationals came from ACT UP chapters, and Queer Nation was organized along similar lines of chapters in various locations across the country. I think it’s important to note that queer studies and Queer Nation are not just historical. Both are still alive, although Queer Nation doesn’t have the visibility and vibrancy that it once did. Queer studies, in contrast, has established itself in more enduring ways in the academy by creating journals (e.g., GLQ, QED) as well as queer studies programs that are often connected to LGBT studies programs (e.g., Wesleyan, Brandeis). Queer studies has also established itself in women’s studies programs and departments (e.g., Portland State University). I entered the academy in the 1980s, and my experiences in the academy and, for me, the activism of ACT UP shaped a lot of my thinking about sexualities. When Queer Nation emerged, I was immediately drawn to their much larger agenda, direct action tactics, and the intersectionality of sexual-

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ities with race, class, gender, religion, etc. I remember a Queer Nation sticker that said, “Dress for Success—Wear a White Penis.” I have no idea if they invented the phrase or not. The AIDS crisis and the anger that it created among LGBTQ communities cannot be underestimated. That anger was reflected in the artwork of Gran Fury, ACT UP die-ins, and other expressions of outrage. This anger and what it meant to be queer immediately resonated with me when the Queer Nation manifesto declared that being queer “means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred” (“The Queer Nation Manifesto,” 1990). Queer opened up discussions about sexualities and concerns well beyond the traditional confines of “gay” and “lesbian.” Fred Corey and I wrote about this anger in “DeathTEXT” (2012), but it’s impossible to capture that zeitgeist as it was a moment in time. At one time in my life, race was the defining force in everyday life. I lived in the first county to integrate its schools in Georgia. Race was an important consideration every day in every way, as Jim Crow was slowly dying in the South. When I graduated from high school in the only high school in a county about 100 miles to the southwest, the world was rapidly changing. The economy in this county was driven by the cotton mill industry, yet NAFTA was about to become an enormous force in the economics of this kind of place. Later in my life, when sexuality became more important, I recognized important parallels and disjunctures from the ways that racial difference functioned in the South. I tried to bring these tensions to “Show/ Down Time” (Nakayama, 1994) and to highlight the uneasy coalitions that are always (im)possible. What are some of the early examples you can think of that led to the nexus of intercultural communication and queer studies? Tom: This is a difficult one, as I don’t know who was the “first” to bring them together. I guess we could look at “Gayspeak” and see if there’s a chapter on African American/Black LGBT communication. I’m not sure how we want to define “queer” . . . Bernadette: In answering this question, one of the first pieces that comes to mind is your essay “Show/Down Time: ‘Race,’ Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture” (Nakayama, 1994). For me, that essay continues to stand the test of time. It stands as an example of how to do intersectional critique, and specifically how to do intersectional queer critique. While it may not necessarily be thought of as intercultural communication, it deals with transnationalism, imperialism, and popular culture, which are central issues for us as intercultural scholars. It also asks us to think and theorize from an Other perspective, which is something that I think scholars are still trying to do. I

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continue to use it in my courses, and especially in my Critical Intercultural Communication graduate seminar. In many cases, graduate students feel overwhelmed and say they don’t know how to do intersectional critique. It continues to stand as a model for that. I think a lot as well in terms of scholars whose work has embodied a queer intercultural perspective, which for me is an intersectional approach to queerness and culture. Again, it comes back to feminist theory as the analytic framework to bring together all of these aspects. Folks like Bryant K. Alexander, John T. Warren, Julia Johnson, and Gust Yep come to mind as critical intercultural and queer work before it was labeled as such. Tom: I tend to agree. The intersectional history of queer intercultural work was done before the term was mapped over that work. I am happy to be included in that group. It’s interesting that it doesn’t seem to be highly cited or a major article for others. In any case, race, gender, and sexuality (and much more) are such important, deeply entwined parts of identities, world experiences, and everyday lives that they shouldn’t be so easily ignored. They work together and against each other in many different ways in everyday life. What are some important points of connection between intercultural communication and queer studies? What do they bring to one another? Tom: Intercultural communication, especially critical intercultural communication, has provided one of the homes for the kinds of work that bring together queer studies and intercultural communication. Of course, creating this home was not without some resistance from the view that this wasn’t “intercultural communication” and distinctions were made between “intercultural communication” and “cross-cultural communication,” etc. as the breadth of intercultural communication expanded beyond the view of “national cultures” as key to understanding cultural differences on the international level. Bernadette: For me a lot of this starts with the rhetorical shift in intercultural communication. Basically, would queer intercultural communication have been possible without it? The rhetorical shift led by folks like you, Dreama Moon, Lisa Flores, Fernando Delgado, and Marouf Hasian opened the field for the possibility of where we are now, not only in terms of the critical and queer turn, but the performative. The juncture of queerness and intercultural communication revolves around how we think about critical. I often have my graduate students read Kent Ono’s (2011) “Critical: A Finer Edge” as a way to think about what critical intercultural communication can be. One of the things I like about the piece is that he challenges us to think about critical

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beyond just the typical focus on continental philosophy and instead engage feminist, queer, and performance theories. The critical, practical, applicable, and experiential is where I see queer and intercultural communication meeting. Also, perhaps they coalesce around activism, which goes back to your discussion of Queer Nation. In terms of activism, I am also consistently impressed with the work Karma Chávez has been doing around coalitional politics between immigrant rights groups and LGBTQ groups, as well as her involvement in Against Equality. This kind of approach informed the revisions we (Kate Willink and I) did when we revised and updated the graduate curriculum in culture and communication at the University of Denver. It was important for us to take an intersectional approach to culture that, as you mention, moved away from traditional nation-centered models. We also decided that it was only going to be a critical approach. We created courses like Critical Intercultural Communication, Critical Methods for Studying Culture, Writing Culture, along with courses such as Critical Sexuality Studies, Performative Writing, Performance Ethnography, Culture and Affect, and Critical Whiteness Studies. I’m curious about the shifts you had in your graduate curriculum at your previous institution, especially given that it is a much larger department. Tom: I think one of the things that grounds our work in this area is the dialectical tension (Martin & Nakayama, 1999) with the realities of “traveling” to other sites where there are very different assumptions. I put “travel” in quotation marks as it doesn’t always mean traveling to other locations in the physical sense but also in the intellectual sense. Here I think that it is important for queer intercultural communication scholars to consider the ways that living in an international environment also impact critical/queer intercultural work. Some countries have the death penalty for “homosexuality,” and how is traveling there different for LGBTQ travelers/sojourners than for others? Other countries don’t have the death penalty but have a range of other penalties including prison time (see, for example, HRC’s map: https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/Criminalization-Map-042315. pdf). Queer intercultural communication scholars need to better understand and explore the institutional powers that oppress LGBTQ peoples around the world. What is the role of religion as institutionalized and empowered by the people of various cultures? Or is religion used as a convenient weapon to empower homophobia? What other institutions are fueling antiqueer policies and sentiments, and which institutions are pushing back against those politics—for example, tourism? International work is complex and difficult, but I want to call for more of that work so that we better understand the institutional politics that cross cultures and those politics that are culture-specific. Without understanding these complexities in cultures, communication, and

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queer politics, it can be difficult to navigate our way through these issues and push for social change. What do you see as the future of intercultural communication, and critical intercultural communication in particular? Bernadette: The future in some ways needs to be even more praxis-oriented. What can we as intercultural scholars and teachers bring to the table when it comes to the challenges faced by undocumented students or the way the current presidential administration is literally trying to erase trans people out of existence? These are the kinds of questions that I think many of us are dealing with and that our students want answers to. Folks like Shinsuke Eguchi, Benny LeMaster, and Amber Johnson represent to me the best of what we can be as we think about what we need not only as scholars but as practitioners in intercultural communication. Because of the changing political and media landscapes, we need to develop new skills and rethink roles. Also, I think part of rethinking our roles requires that we be open to and learn new methods for doing our scholarship. I, along with some of my collaborators who do work that is performance-centered have encountered some pushback or resistance from some intercultural scholars. Ironically, at times, there seems to be a desire for us to disembody our identities in the critical intercultural work we do. Drawing on our own experiences is often shunned upon and taken nonseriously as academic work. At times, it feels like even critical scholars in culture are performing discipline through politics of respectability by dictating what counts as rigorous work on culture. People of color have been spoken for and treated violently by the anthropological gaze; thus, I often wonder if these critiques, which most often are directed at scholars of color, are again another form of not only disciplining but paternalism and speaking for. Thus, the future of critical intercultural communication has to be more inclusive of critical performative and automethodologies that are often connected to decolonial, feminist, and indigenous methodologies. Tom: I agree. I wrote “Sextext” with Fred Corey (Corey & Nakayama, 1997) to open up scholarship to other ways of writing or “reporting” our scholarship and to highlight the ways that sexuality and sexual desire are a part of that process (depending on what the scholarship is about). For queer studies to ignore or overlook desire seemed problematic, and there must be many other ways to capture that part of what being queer is about. It’s not the only thing, of course, but how can scholarship capture that part of queer? I hoped that that journal article opened up many different ways of writing scholarship that can address the many, many ways of experiencing life—whether racial,

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sexual, gendered, etc. Life is so complex that any one way to do scholarship can’t capture the complexities of everyday experiences. What advice do you have for folks who want to start doing work in queer intercultural communication? Bernadette: First and foremost, know the work of those who came before you. Please don’t Columbus us. The politics of citation are very important. Do not erase women of color. We have always been here doing the work, so please acknowledge that. If you don’t cite women of color already, then ask yourself why, and do something about it. Also, if you are a man of color doing this work, please don’t attack intersectionality. Sorry, but unreflexively critiquing a theory created by Black women does not make you particularly radical or cutting edge. You may disagree with work that has come before you. You may think you can do it better. Maybe you can, but recognize that those that came before you created a space for you to enter the conversation. Be kind. Be compassionate. Be humble and practice critical love and intersectional reflexivity. Tom: I agree. It is very important to situate your work within the historical trajectory of the work of others. The history of ideas is a part of what you are entering and participating in. It is also crucial that you consider the historical moment in which you are writing. The tensions and goals of any moment may not be the same in another moment. Try to understand the issues that others have confronted when you read their work. In this area, in particular, the social and legal climate has changed radically in a very short time period. These rapid changes mean that it is easy to misunderstand other contexts and identifications from previous eras. In addition, it is also important to recognize how various aspects of identities—e.g., race, gender, sexualities—work together as well as against each other in intersectional work. And, as always, things are always more complicated than they seem. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What do you see as emerging issues that come together at the nexus of critical intercultural communication and queer studies? 2. How do your identities inform the ways you understand the world and larger relations of power? 3. Can you think of examples in popular culture that bring together intercultural communication and queerness?

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REFERENCES Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Calafell, B. M., & Eguchi, S. (In press). Are we queer yet? Queerness on the horizon in academia. In A. Johnson & B. LeMaster (Eds.), Dancing with gender in the intersections: Critical autoethnography, intercultural communication, and the case for gender futurity. Corey, F. C., & Nakayama, T. K. (1997). Sextext. Text and Performance Quarterly, 17(1), 58–68. doi:10.1080/10462939709366169. Corey, F., & Nakayama, T. K. (2012). DeathTEXT. Western Journal of Communication, 76(1), 17–23. doi:10.1080/10570314.2012.637542. Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory, 9(1): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1999. tb00160.x. Moraga, C. (1983). Loving in the war years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios. Boston, MA: South End Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York: New York University Press. Nakayama, T. K. (1994). Show/down time: “Race,” gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 11(2), 162–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15295039409366893. Ono, K. A. (2011). Critical: A finer edge. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8(1), 93–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2011.543332. Our history. (n.d.). Queer Nation NY. Retrieved from http://queernationny.org/history. The Queer Nation manifesto. (1990). Retrieved from https://www.historyisaweapon.com/ defcon1/queernation.html

Closing Thoughts The Future of Queer Intercultural Communication Shinsuke Eguchi, Sophie Jones, Hannah R. Long, and Anthony Rosendo Zariñana

We urge critical scholars not to think about crossroads as a singular moment through which we move and close off other options, or other roads not taken. We will be faced with many, and unending, crossroads as we move ahead. We cannot always see the path clearly, nor foresee world events, but we must move forward with critical engagement of these issues. —T. K. Nakayama and R. T. Halualani, The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. —J. E. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity

The chapters included in Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences exemplify the ongoing development of queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry. More precisely, these chapters attend to the ways in which relationalities, spatialities, and/or praxis and social justice working around the conceptual and methodological intersections among intersectionality, belonging, and differences represent the current direction of the field. However, along with my coeditor, Dr. Bernadette Marie Calafell, I (Shinsuke Eguchi) recognize some holes in this volume that continue to require much attention from the field of queer intercultural communication. For that reason, I aim to create an intellectual space to reconsider the future direction of queer intercultural communication one more time before 267

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ending this volume. Drawing on Muñoz’s (2009) theorizing of queerness as a futuristic paradigm of utopia, I argue that queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry is in need of imagining and envisioning what the future looks like. However, it is worthwhile to mention that such a vision of future always already requires ongoing revision. The future is a dynamic and everchanging location of queer imagination. To take an initial step toward the future of queer intercultural communication, I have also invited three doctoral students whose primary research interest is in this field to cowrite this chapter. As a team, we collectively present each of our temporal visions toward the future by attending to the following four themes: paradigms beyond/ outside Western queer formations, decoloniality, fat and dis/ability studies, and relationality/coalition and transing. These themes are not mutually exclusive; there are some overlaps in and across the four themes. However, we organize the themes in such a manner as to critically reflect on the holes of this volume in a clear and considerate manner. By writing this concluding chapter, our hope is to invite the diversity of scholars, intellectuals, social activists, artists, performers, and policy and culture makers to carry on queer intercultural communication as a field of inquiry. PARADIGMS BEYOND/OUTSIDE WESTERN QUEER FORMATIONS Following what queer intercultural communication scholars such as Chávez (2013), Eguchi and Asante (2016), and Yep (2013) have argued before, I (Shinsuke) argue that queer intercultural communication must push forward the ways in which sexually dissident and gender-nonconforming subjects experience, participate in, and resist intercultural communication in and across local, national, and transnational contexts implicated by Western queer formations. In the name of human rights movements, globalization rapidly normalizes a discursive and ideological flow of LGBTQIA+ identities, performance, and politics as (White, Western, and U.S. American) intelligibility. Sexually dissident and gender-nonconforming subjects coming from diverse cultural backgrounds are collectively pressured to follow Western queer formations of sexual and gender identities, performances, and politics as the institutional standard. Western queer formations homogenize, stabilize, and essentialize organizations of cultural, sexual, and gender differences among sexually dissident and gender-nonconforming subjects who do not share sameness otherwise. The culturally specific and text-specific nuances of sexually dissident and gender-nonconforming performances represent symbols of backwardness in today’s context of globalization that privileges the West as the future of the modern world. In so doing, Western queer

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formations strategically recenter and reposition the West as the referencing point of sexual dissident and gender-nonconforming subjects in and across local, national, and transnational contexts. This centrality of the West as the normative gaze has been and is clearly a problem for the theoretical and methodological developments of both intercultural communication and queer/trans studies (e.g., Chávez, 2013; Ono, 2010). As the introductory chapter in this volume has suggested, intercultural communication has been largely a White, Western, and U.S. American intellectual site of making sense of non-White, non-Western, and non-U.S. American Others. Scholars working in intercultural communication almost already begin their research designs, analyses, and writings from the ideological, paradigmatic, and academic locations of the West. At the same time, queer studies has been positioned as originating from the Western, U.S. American academy. Queer knowing, acting, and being implicate the Western, U.S. American paradigm that may erase, ignore, and marginalize alternative and additional nuances of antinormative sexualities and genders in and across the lines of differences. While I do not mean to relegate this conversation to a simplistic binary between the West and non-West, I believe that the field must open up much wider and more flexible spaces to invite the diverse and multiple paradigms of sexualities and genders beyond/outside Western queer formations. Thus, a following concern continues to require critical attention. While this volume illustrates the complex diversity of race, gender, and class in relation to queerness, I am also aware that all of us working on both the queer and the intercultural belong to the Western academic system of knowledge production, regardless of our cultural backgrounds. We cannot deny the fact that we wittingly or unwittingly embody, perform, and carry on being a part of the White, Western, and U.S. American ivory tower. So how can we completely and fully decenter our undeniable reproductions of White, Western, and U.S. American privilege as a colonial site of knowledge production? How can we start on our own to marginalize the White, Western, and U.S. American elements from our own research designs, analyses, and writings? Answering these questions allows us to stop recycling simplistic interactions between the West and “the rest.” Queer interculturalists must pay attention to much more complex and constitutive interactions. For example, born and raised in Japan, which has been functioning as a major political-economic tiger of Asia, I find that Japanese queer cultural productions that remake White gay formations have colonial, imperial influences on other queer cultural productions in Asia. This kind of complexity of queer colonial and imperial production must be questioned and critiqued in and across various localities. Thus, queer intercultural communication requires the conceptual and methodological significance of decoloniality.

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DECOLONIALITY Decoloniality seems to be a dirty word, or so I (Anthony Rosendo Zariñana) have gathered by reactions to the idea within the emergent field of queer intercultural communication. When offering its elaborations, emphasizing its scholarly integrity, and clarifying the vital optic it offers, there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm and overall distrust. Still, I do not know what people think I mean by decoloniality when I offer its logic. But from what I can surmise, if we tacitly permit postcoloniality to be perceived and to function as the new frontier of antioccidental productions, the ushering of such an exclusive paradigm promises new violence for other productions of knowing from locales like the third-world Global South. Upholding a new standard will not make for an equitable world or inform the imaginary to do so in any useful way. My point here is to remind us that revolving a new logic from certain global locales involves confronting the profound absence of, indeed, other Brown bodies. And as our queer intercultural field is primarily grounded in the United States, our works are not exempt from larger, nationalistic anxieties surrounding the influx of Brown bodies, and again, other particular Brown bodies typically from Latin countries, most often conflated with Mexican origin. We are not unbound to these reservations regarding knowledge productions and the bodies they come from. To call it racism would be missing the point, ignoring the larger consequential machination that we carry the ability to reproduce. I am not saying you are racist; if that is what you hear you are missing the point. That is, your reservation about decoloniality reflects and remains within a tried-and-true discourse of empire belongings. This is nothing new, but I would not be surprised if this Brown body (Anthony’s) presenting such considerations would be characterized as antagonistic, which would then require me to ask you to interrogate that position. It is with the vital wave of incoming perspectives and bodies of knowledge that we must first move beyond the bizarre sentiment that decoloniality is somehow a threat to postcoloniality or that at any point it seeks or sought to threaten such knowledge. Second, we must evacuate the belief that these positions are somehow incapable of coming together, especially given the proximal nature to poststructuralism that this volume is especially interested in. I now mark current trajectories shaping a brief consideration of queer decolonial commitments. The first maintains a primary adherence to coalition endeavors, including all inevitable messiness. Ghabra and Calafell (2018) offer a vital guide in actualizing queer coalition across productive moments of failure. Integrating decoloniality with a feminist alliance ethic by McIntosh and Hobson (2013) enables their realization and maintenance of crucial unions within a complex matrix of cultural identifications and societal global locales. Second, queer decoloniality recognizes and promotes suturing

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oneself across injury, violence, and failure. Further articulating an Anzaldúan (1987) imperative, Calafell (2005, 2015) reminds us that joining with one’s shadow, the metaphorical and embodied affect of our most abject queernesses, becomes an indispensable feature of a queer decoloniality. That is, a stop in the journey of queer decoloniality is healing oneself in order to render a queer world abounding through utopian effervescence. The particular paths are unique to each individual, but the significance of this stop enables us to consider our role within violent hegemonic structures and, most importantly, how we can move forward out of psyches of injury and reduce our violent quotidian repetitions unto others. Third, through conceptualizing marriage as an ideograph, Gutierrez-Perez and Andrade (2018) help us realize another means of queer survival and worldmaking via everyday resistance with continued attention to the institutional function of the queer Brown body. It is out of these works I offer queer decoloniality as a means to continually envision queer coalitional worldmaking. As queer and of color academic folk, we are rendered simultaneously excessive and inadequate. Proximity to White supremacy and the mythic norm only gets us so far; we can only be so mainstream, so included, so palatable. But while our belonging is often oscillating between pariah and clique, yes, our means of survival within capitalist academic enterprises are dependent upon the destruction and exploitation of other bodies’ knowledges. Part of the way we do this is as researchers. These above works hold us accountable and remind us to be mindful of the consequences of our research. Their queer decoloniality revitalizes the onus of praxis into the ever-distant horizon, allowing us a way to labor onward within the project of ascending such institutional pits. Doing quotidian decolonial work then becomes an essential, integral component to the project of queer worldmaking. Osha root grows at high altitudes and in thinner air. It is often used to open and accompany shamanic paths of healing. An osha pedagogy understands that we all live in a system dependent upon our erasure, and, while working to maintain our lifeforce, we fall into the traps of reproducing institutional violence in our positions. This is indeed how the system maintains itself. Because of this, we recognize our responsibility to support one another but also understand that doing so includes having the difficult conversations, like this one. While it is not one single individual’s responsibility or fault, we must maintain attention to our mundane labor, and part of this is osha pedagogy: rooted down but within a lofty theoretical contemplation, capable of joining critical sensibilities with empathy and support. If we really want to do the work we say we do, it involves being open to such considerations and qualms. As a decolonial optic, an osha pedagogy allows us to specifically interrogate the accessory space between what we think we are doing and what we are actualizing. Consider this an imperative to treat theory as a diastolic and

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systolic practice. Are we vulnerable enough to take in our positions, our commitments to worldmaking, letting the words infuse with our corporeal selves, and are we allowing ourselves to be transformed by that? Our commitments can then engage beyond a page. For example, an osha pedagogy would compel me to consider my own critically minded values with the reality and consequences that I have never voted in any election. What does that say about and to the people I love? What larger apparatuses am I choosing to be actively complicit with? What does my indifference say about my own comfort and immediacy to violent policy? An osha pedagogy asks us to approach our research and selves in the spirit of the following questions. Are we asking the right questions? Are we growing complacent? What does that tell us? Where do we go from here? What are we doing to each other? What can we do with and for each other? These questions are not for everyone because some will not occupy the baseline considerations they inquire, but in this book, this is for you, it is for us, and it is for after us too. A queer decolonial osha pedagogy operates congruently with Calafell’s (2007) and Griffin’s (2012) notions of critical love and infuses these modes of coalition-oriented healing with Muñoz’s (2009) queer horizon. An osha pedagogy is a reminder we can always do better. And it is against that horizon an osha pedagogy helps us remember where to set our gaze, our hearts, our imagination, our effort, and our worldmaking. FAT AND DIS/ABILITY STUDIES In posing potentiality/ies for the future of queer intercultural communication, we need to consider the way(s) that certain aspects of cultural identities have been neglected or dismissed in previous conversations. As Anthony Rosendo Zariñana reminded us earlier in this chapter, to do this work requires more than thinking; we need to actually do the labor of queer intercultural communication. Halualani and Nakayama (2013) stress this as well, prompting us to consider that intercultural communication has “much at stake for real people and having real consequences” (p. 5). Building from the work of queer scholars of color (Ahmed, 2006; Alexander, 2004, 2014; Calafell, 2013; Chávez, 2013; Eguchi, 2009, 2014; Eguchi, Calafell, & Files-Thompson, 2014; Johnson, 2001; LeMaster, 2014; Muñoz, 1999; Yep, 2013) and disability theorists (Kafer, 2003; McRuer, 2004, 2006), I (Hannah R. Long) echo the need to consider the materiality and embodied aspects of this work. As a queer fat scholar living with mental health and chronic illness concerns, my body is always already present in relation to my work: where I can sit, how much energy I have to write or focus on my work, whether I can honestly concentrate on the work I am doing. However, while these aspects

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of myself are ever present and often hyperattended to, some other parts of who I am, especially my whiteness, U.S. American-ness, and educational access, function invisibly but just as significantly. While some of this presence is due to how culture ascribes meaning to our bodies (Pineau, 2002), another significant aspect is that everything I do and write and breathe and teach occurs in this particular fleshed self; I am always already all of these things. In this section I will give a brief overview of some literature from fat studies and disability studies, as well as how these render significant to the future of queer intercultural communication. Considerations of ability and body size are crucial to challenging and disrupting Cartesian-dualistic ideals about the mind and the body that broadly inform academic thought. Both fat and disabled bodies often operate on binaries positioning them in relation to negation. In other words, fatness is positioned across from thinness (or absence of fat), and disability is positioned across from ability (a supposed absence of disability). Even within those binaries, fat and disabled bodies are often conceived on a hypersexual/ desexualized polarization (Braziel, 2001; Farrell, 2011). Bodies that fall on the “wrong” side of the binary are deemed as “failures” (Braziel, 2001; Murray, 2005). Ahmed (2006) articulates how queerness is also a spatial issue, discussing that how we orient toward other bodies determines how “in line” we are with the hegemonic understandings of spatial, political, national, and familial ways to take up space in proximity to another. Having a body that “does not conform to a normative size and shape” (Longhurst, 2014, p. 22) or the “right” side of the binary affects how others relate to us and how we can relate to the world around us, highlighting the significance of the body as a site of knowledge production and understanding. Additionally, in connection to Ahmed’s (2006) work, fatness and disability are ways that bodies continue to fall outside of the hetero/homonormative expectations of conformity to expression. Disability and fatness highlight the notion that our bodies and selves are not fixed entities (Bailey, 2010; LeBesco, 2014; Longhurst, 2014; McRuer, 2004, 2006) but rather exist “in relation to assemblages of capacity and debility, modulated across historical time, geopolitical space, institutional mandates, and discursive regimes” (Puar, 2017, p. xiv). Fat studies work has increasingly grown in popularity within the last decade. While a great deal of fat studies work is often done in interdisciplinary contexts, this does not mean that it has been done utilizing an intersectional lens. Most of the published research on fat bodies/bodies of size centers around fat White women either by failing to consider race (and therefore assuming whiteness as default; McCalphin & Tango, 2014) or by specifically only attending to how White women experience fatphobia, extending White feminism (Eguchi & Long, 2018). The interconnectedness of various aspects of identity manifests as different everyday material experiences since we exist within an “imperialist, capitalist white supremacist patriarchy” (hooks,

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2012, p. 4); the intersections of these systems and their influence on our bodies are crucial. Additionally, there is also very little work done considering fatness and queerness. As of the date of this writing, there is only one text, Queering Fat Embodiment (Pausé, Wykes, & Murray, 2014), that considers this connection explicitly. Disability studies work has been tied to queer studies, particularly through the lens of crip theory (Kafer, 2003; McRuer, 2006). Connecting notions of compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality, McRuer (2006) argues that both function as the default assumption, perpetuating ideas of normalcy and hegemony. Kafer (2003) also reminds us that the “interrelationship” (p. 82) between queerness and disability is significant, with both disability and queerness being historically conceptualized as deviance. Similarly, thinner bodies (along with heterosexual and able-bodied) are conceived as the norm (Longhurst, 2014). The importance of considering the everyday materiality of bodies within intercultural communication, specifically queer intercultural communication, is vital. Specifically, fatness and disability are two vectors through which one can theorize self, identity, and culture. In particular, in the aforementioned text on Queering Fat Embodiment (Pausé, Wykes, & Murray, 2014), the authors note that their book is the first to specifically focus on connecting fatness and queerness, and they theorize from McRuer’s notion of crip theory and Rich’s compulsory heterosexuality as well. They discuss how queerness and fatness (and I would extend this to dis/ability too) have both been the results of moral panics, “in which they are conceived as perverse, excessive, unnatural, and a threat to the social order” (p. 3). However, it is also important to resist the temptation to render all fatness and disability as queer. Wykes (Pausé, Wykes, & Murray, 2014) argues that because of how bodies are positioned within contemporary Western culture, “only slender bodies are presented as legitimate objects of heterosexual desire” (p. 1). However, I counter this notion, in that these same bodies also exist within an “imperialist, capitalist white supremacist patriarchy” (hooks, 2012, p. 4); the heteropatriarchy still informs how we render desire. RELATIONALITY/COALITION AND TRANSING When I (Sophie Jones) consider how to challenge the forces of White heteropatriarchy, I think of the ways we are taught to fight against, rather than with, each other. Eguchi and Long (2018) argue for the potential of radical queer families as a way to challenge the structural boundaries that separate and categorize us. Rather than shy away from difference, they argue that “possibilities for building queer familial coalitions within and among different kinds of queers require nonviolent and nontoxic spaces of healing (as much

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as is possible) where they can share their memories, pains, and vulnerabilities” (Eguchi & Long, 2018, p. 15). From a queer relational standpoint, the difficult moments in which we must negotiate space with one another are valuable precisely because they challenge cultural hierarchies that are meant to keep us separate. In a similar vein, Cohen (1997) challenges us to consider alliances with individuals who do not necessarily deviate from heterosexuality but who challenge the normative standards of sexuality all the same. This move requires flexibility and empathy, as many will see it as an invasion of queer space, but as Eguchi and Long (2018) emphasize, the question is not what identities we have in common but what dissatisfactions we share. We must ask ourselves, Who ultimately benefits from our separation? This is not easy work, and it is inevitable that conflicts will arise within any queer collective or family. However, Abdi and Calafell (2017) remind us that “studies of queerness and failure offer the ability to imagine alternatives to hegemonic systems” (p. 362). In their piece on queer utopias, they define “queerness” as not an identity but an action. To be queer, then, is to resist oppressive norms and push toward the potential for change in the future. This aligns with Cohen’s (1997) argument that, at its best, queer politics is unique in its strategy “to confront normalizing power by emphasizing and exaggerating their own anti-normative characteristics and non-stable behavior” (p. 439). However, Cohen observes that in practice, queer politics often fails to structurally challenge normative processes. In part, we argue that this failure is due to the individualist ideologies of U.S. American political movements; a collective working to highlight antinormative features is a much stronger challenge to a social system than an individual’s lone challenge. In order to strengthen the status quo, minority groups are strategically pitted against each other for majority approval. As Skidmore (2011) points out, in order to humanize themselves, members of minority groups will often pledge allegiance to White heteronormativity and thus “participate in the subjugation of other nonnormative bodies” (p. 278). While I do not condemn those who do so, as it is merely one of many survival tactics, it is important that we recognize this as a false division. Insisting that our issues are entirely separate serves to place us at odds with each other, keeps us tied up in a struggle for resources and recognition, and prevents meaningful partnerships between and across our various areas of difference (Bassichis, Lee, & Spade, 2011). This failure to resist division can be found in even the most critical of spaces. For example, while queer studies tends to focus on sexual orientation, and that focus can contribute to the invisibility of other identities. Chávez (2013) argues that “while queer theory has revealed the logics of heteronormativity, it has often enacted its own erasures of transsexual, transgender, and gender-non-conforming people” (p. 86). As Skidmore (2011) also points

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out, transgender individuals can align with whiteness to construct the image of the “good transsexual” (p. 270); similarly, Page and Richardson (2010) argue that transness and gender nonnormativity are more heavily policed in communities of color due to the colonizing and coercive force of White civility. In both cases, the standards of White heteropatriarchy are reinforced rather than challenged. This highlights the need for coalition building across difference so that the interests of one identity are not privileged over others (Ghabra & Calafell, 2018). By actively engaging in challenging questions about difference and our roles within the systems that may negatively impact our peers, we can continue pushing toward a queer utopia (Abdi & Calafell, 2017). To move toward a more radical approach to intercultural communication research, I argue for greater attention paid to the concept of “transing” put forth by Yep, Russo, Allen, and Chivers (2017) as a framework to promote the work of “recentering the subjectivities of the gendered bodies rather than the social imposition of gender categories” (p. 58). Transing as a framework works from a few key premises that highlight the intersectional nature of gender and consider the ways gender works on both a personal, performative level and also on a structural level. In addition, transing complicates our binary understanding of gender, arguing that gender manifests in a wide array of expressions rather than a spectrum with “masculine” and “feminine” on opposite and opposing sides. This understanding of gender outside of a binary spectrum is due to intentional focus on the “subjectivities of individuals in their own gendered bodies as they inhabit and enact identities and negotiate and navigate the social world” (Yep et al., 2017, p. 57). As we focus more strongly on lived subjectivities, we must acknowledge the intersectional factors that create those subjectivities so that rather than viewing issues of identity as separate, we engage in the work of deconstruction barriers both within our own self-perceptions and in our commitments to our communities at large. As Eguchi and Long (2018) explain, their unique positionalities influenced the ways they were perceived and the ways they performed “femme” identity. Despite both being aligned with the same term, the performances and expectations they had to work within were dramatically different for each of them, which reinforces the importance of considering the complexities of multiple forces of identification and oppression when engaging in meaningful reformative work. Although it is all too tempting to assign one reality to a group, change is only possible when we allow ourselves the space to make things messy. *** Overall, this concluding chapter has attended to a number of holes in Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences. These are paradigms beyond/outside Western queer

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formations, decoloniality, fat and dis/ability studies, and relationality/coalition and transing. These holes offer, however, possibilities for expanding the circumference of queer intercultural communication in the future. At the same time, we collectively emphasize that the points we have discussed in this chapter are neither complete nor perfect visions toward the future of queer intercultural communication. We critically reflect that our visions for queer intercultural communication move along just some of many possible paths toward the future. Simultaneously, it is our hope that the sharing of our visions productively invites questions and critiques that help build the circumference of queer intercultural communication. So the field continues to intellectually and politically dedicate itself to work against everyday reproductions and reconstitution of queerphobia and/or transphobia in and across local, national, and global contexts. The future of queer intercultural communication is only possible when we as queer interculturalists revise and revise again our visions toward the future. NOTE This chapter’s authors are listed alphabetically according to last name.

REFERENCES Abdi, S., & Calafell, B. M. (2017). Queer utopias and a (feminist) Iranian vampire: A critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34(4), 358–370. Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Alexander, B. K. (2004). (Re)visioning the ethnographic site: Interpretive ethnography as a method of pedagogical reflexivity and scholarly production. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(3), 416–441. Alexander, B. K. (2014). Bodies yearning on the borders of becoming: A performative reflection on three embodied axes of social difference. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(10), 1169–1178. Anzaldúa, G. E. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Bailey, C. (2010). Supersizing America: Fatness and post-9/11 cultural anxieties. The Journal of Popular Culture, 43(3), 441–462. Bassichis, M., Lee, A., & Spade, D. (2011). Building an abolitionist trans and queer movement with everything we’ve got. In E. Stanley & N. Smith (Eds.), Captive genders: Trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex (pp. 15–40). Oakland, CA: AK Press. Braziel, J. A. (2001). Sex and fat chicks: Deterritorializing the fat female body. In J. A. Braziel & K. LeBesco (Eds.), Bodies out of bounds: Fatness and transgression (pp. 231–254). Berkeley: University of California Press. Calafell, B. M. (2005). Pro(re-)claiming loss: A performance pilgrimage in search of Malintzin Tené pal. Text and Performance Quarterly, 25(1), 43–56. Calafell, B. M. (2007). Mentoring and love: An open letter. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 7(4), 425–441. Calafell, B. M. (2013). (I)dentities: Considering accountability, reflexivity, and intersectionality in the I and the we. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 9(2), 6–13.

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Index

AAPF. See African American Policy Forum academic queer homes, 143–145 activism: of ACT UP, 260–261; #BlackLivesMatter, 239–240, 245, 246, 247; gay rights movement, 32, 225–226, 227–228, 228–229, 232–234; #GirlsLikeUs, 244; intersectional, 243, 245–249; in Japan, 30; by Latinx population, 199; of PCARE, 64, 65, 73; by Sasso, 161–162; #SayHerName campaign, 240–241, 246, 247–248, 249–250, 249–251, 252–253; in South Africa, 30; in U.S., 30 ACT UP, 260–261 Africa: anti-homosexuality bills in, 158; homonationalism impacting, 163; QIC limitations in, 159; queer postcolonial theory in, 162–165; queer theory encouragement for, 173; sexual nonnormativity in precolonial West, 160–161; South, 30–31, 32–33. See also Ghana African American gay/bisexual men: “End the Epidemic” initiatives for, 195; HIV impact on, 199–200; PrEP initiative for, 200–201; social marketing PrEP for HIV prevention of, 205–211 African American Policy Forum (AAPF), 240

allyship: definition of, 241, 249; #SayHerName campaign building, 249–251 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 7 anti-homosexuality bills, 158 anti-LGBTIQ+ violence, 158, 167–168, 169, 170, 171 Anzaldúa, Gloria: inspiration from, 50–51; on spirituality, 197–198 APA. See American Psychiatric Association Arabic terminology, 35–36 Asian gay men: Chongsuk Han on, 19–20, 80; feminization of, 79–80; U.S. stereotype of, 80–81. See also Chinese gay Internet celebrities audience research, 81, 92 audience segmentation, 201–202 autoethnography: on academic homes, 143–145; on digital queer intercultural translations, 151–153; on geolocationbased QIC, 145–148; for inspiration, 142; narratives of intelligibility within, 180–181; on queer slippages, 148–151 Banks, Daniella: bareback riding by, 130–131; colonialism in relation to, 132; at gay rodeo, first experience, 133–134; on homonormativity, 135; inspiration from, 131; learning from, 281

282

Index

136; queer theory regarding, 131; on rodeo types, 134–135; White lesbianism stereotype compared to, 131–132, 132–133; White queer colonialism disruption from, 134 BDSM. See bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism belonging: boundaries of, redefining, 224, 234–235; Día de los Muertos celebrations creating opportunities for, 99–100, 101; homely, 223; methodology of, 9–10; politics of, 9, 217, 220–221, 221–231 berdaches, 33 “black alternative life,” 226 #BlackLivesMatter: prominence of, 239–240; #SayHerName campaign working with, 246; sensationalization strategy of, 247; students on, 245 Black feminist intersectionality, 240, 241 BlackGirlTragic.com, 245–246 Black lesbian women: Banks as, 130–135, 136; Black Queer Identity Matrix on world view of, 219; coexistence as vital to, 223; The Color Purple portrayal of, 222; empowerment of, 234; film history representation of, 221–224; inclusivity struggle of, 231–232; language and code names, 218, 232; as lead character, 217; LGBTQ community relations with, 229, 230; masculinity, 236n1; progress in representation of, 224–225; rarity of focusing on, 220–221; Rees as, 217–218; She Hate Me portrayal of, 221; television characters, 227; Watermelon Woman portrayal of, 222. See also Pariah Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement: #BlackLivesMatter, 239–240, 245, 246, 247; establishment of, 239–240; origin story, 245 Black Queer Identity Matrix: on Black lesbian women masculinity, 236n1; on Black lesbian women world view, 219; QIC and, 232–234 Black transgender women: allyship for, 241, 249–251; digital stories for visibility of, 242–245; #GirlsLikeUs for, 244; hate crime against, 250–251;

HIV rates of, 202; intersectional activism in relation to, 245–249; #SayHerName campaign inclusion of, 247–248; state violence against, 239, 240–241, 246 Black Twitter, 204 BL fandom. See boys’ love fandom BLM movement. See Black Lives Matter movement bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism (BDSM), 24–25 boys’ love (BL) fandom, 85–86 Castellanos, Antonio. See Jotería game Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): PrEP favored by, 200; Testing Makes Us Stronger campaign of, 202 CGRA. See Colorado Gay Rodeo Association charrería rodeo: IGRA rodeo relations with, 127–128, 129; tradition of, 128 Chávez, Karma: on complexity of intercultural exchanges, 211; field of inquiry proposed by, 3; on hope, 187; on interlocking oppression, 198; on QIC commonalities, 196; on queer theory deficiency, 182; on queer voice absence, 143; on scholarly marginalization, 22; on violence of normativity, 67 Chicana feminists, 260 China: BL fandom rise in, 85–86; homosexuality in, 82, 90; masculinity crisis in, 89–90 Chinese gay Internet celebrities: audience research on, 81, 92; Duyao as, 83, 83–84; evolution of, 92–93; history of, 82–84; from The Josh & Eddie Show, 79; J.T. as, 79, 84–87, 87, 90–91, 94. See also Ye Fan “Chinese top, British bottom”: J.T. and, 90–91; RMIUC and, 87–90; social contributions from, 91 Chongsuk Han: on Asian gay men, 19–20, 80; on gay rights movement, 228 cisgenderism: as discursive practice, 6; morphology in relation to, 251 civility, 63 “classy,” 167–171

Index closet paradigm: imperialism, 20; Manalansan on, 164 Cohen, Cathy, 172–173, 275 colonialism: Banks desire rooted in, 132; heteropatriarchy from, 160; international framing in relation to, 125–126; sexual nonnormativity impacted by, 160–161; White queer, 127–130, 134 coloniality of gender, 64 Colorado Gay Rodeo Association (CGRA), 122, 127 The Color Purple, 222 comic frame: consciousness heightened from, 112; function of, 103–104; for reconstitution of audience, 108–109; for reconstitution of form, 109–110; reconstitution of purpose, 111 community identification: in QIC, 198–199; social marketing critique, 210–211 conceptual foundations, 4–7 concrete utopias: for Jotería, 184–185, 187; Muñoz on, 73–74, 159, 187; prison abolition as, 73–74 Conquergood, D., 180 Cox, Laverne, 244–245 CPT. See cultural prism theory Crenshaw, Kimberlé: on intersectionality, 8, 162–163; as mother of intersectionality, 251; #SayHerName campaign co-founded by, 240 criminality: racialized, 63, 70, 71–73; of sexual nonnormativity, 63 criminalization: GPCCs for homosexuality, 161–162; of peers, 70–73 critical performance ethnography: insecurities with, 121; reflexivity as key to, 120 cultural prism theory (CPT): methodology relevance of, 234–235; for Pariah critique, 217; Pariah cultural impact moments application of, 225–228; Pariah historical impact moments application of, 221–225; Pariah political impact moments application of, 228–231; politics of belonging and, 220–221 cybersex, 25

283

deadnaming, 244–245 decoloniality, 270–272 decolonization: counternarratives for, 151; Ghana possibility of, 159–160; of IC, push for, 143, 153–154; IGRA rodeo and, 130–135; Jotería game for, 187, 190n3 deconstruction, 8 dehumanization, 70, 71–72 Día de los Muertos celebrations: background on, 100; in Chicago, 109; comic frame functions in, 103–104; comic frame reconstituting audience at, 108–109; comic frame reconstituting form at, 109–110; comic frame reconstituting purpose at, 111; corporate sponsorship of, 106–107; cultural appropriation of, 102–103; in Fort Lauderdale, 108–109; Latinx population relationship building during, 103–104, 112; location selection of, 114n2; in Los Angeles, 108–109; ofrenda, 100, 103–104, 107–108, 109–110, 111; opportunities for belonging at, 99–100, 101; popular culture presence of, 100; in San Antonio, 110, 111; theoretical framework for studying, 101–106; transformation from, 113 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), 7 dialogic performance, 180–181 dialogue/discussion: on future of IC, 264–265; on QIC advice, 265; on queer definitions, 259–261; on queer studies and IC connections, 261–264 digital queer intercultural translations, 151–153 digital stories, 242–245 disability, 7 disability studies, 272–274 disidentification: Muñoz defining, 166; by Sasso, 169 The Diva Rules (Visage), 169, 170 diversity management, 8 down low (DL), 171, 185, 190n5 DSM. See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

284

Index

Duyao: fame of, 83; realness and appeal of, 83–84 “embodied translation,” 38, 39 family relations: Iranian American queer women, 51–52, 54, 55–56, 58–59; in Pariah, 218 fat studies, 272–274 feminization, 79–80 “femme,” 252–253 Ferguson, Roderick: on queer of color criticism, 162; on White gay formations, 9 Fernandez, Ana, 110 Fire, 34 Foucault, M.: on homosexuality, 25–26; on sexuality conceptualization, 23–24 free world students, 64–65, 70, 75n3 funü, 85 Furong Jiejie, 83 Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand (GLOW), 30 Gay and Lesbian Politics course, 147 gay bar vignette, 149–150 gay rights movement: Chongsuk Han on, 228; Pariah rejecting cultural norms of, 225–226, 229, 232–234; queer of color exclusion from, 227–228; same-sex marriage as focus of, 228; sexual orientalism rhetoric of, 32; whiteness of, 229 gender: coloniality of, 64; JIIC search on, 21 gender binary, 31, 41n3 gender identity: assumptions of, 6; Jotería game character cards portraying, 185–186; Western queer formations impacting, 268–269. See also specific gender identities geolocation-based applications: Ong on, 151–152; vignette, 152–153 geolocation-based queer intercultural communication, 145–148 George, Nelson, 225, 226 Ghana: anti-LGBTIQ+ violence in, 158, 167–168, 169, 170, 171; “classy” concept in, 167–171; Criminal Code

Article 105 of, 161; decolonization possibility in, 159–160; homosexuality context in, 160–162; LGBTQI+ visibility politics in, 172–173; queerly ambivalence in, 159, 166, 167–171, 172; queerness in, linguistic code of, 158; Sasso of, 158, 161–162, 167–171, 172–173 Ghanaian Pentecostalist Charismatic Church leaders (GPCCs), 161–162 #GirlsLikeUs, 244 glocalization, 25 GLOW. See Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand Goffman, E., 233–234 GPCCs. See Ghanaian Pentecostalist Charismatic Church leaders hate crime, 250–251 health promotion: audience segmentation in, 201–202; future considerations on, 212; marketing mix for, 202–204; popularity of, 201 hegemony and power, 31–33 Hemphill, E., 197, 211 heteronormativity: LGBTQ community concerns overlooked by, 1; marginalization from, 31–32; normalization strengthening, 24; RMIUC fatherhood challenging, 92; as sexuality barrier, 47 heteropatriarchy, 160 HIV: Black transgender women rates of, 202; “End the Epidemic” initiatives for, 195; PrEP approved for reducing, 200–201; QIC for social marketing of, 196–199; social marketing PrEP for preventing, 205–211; U.S. epidemic of, 199–200; vernacular knowledge of, 208–209 homonationalism: Africa impacted by, 163; in IGRA rodeo, 124; imperialism from, 32, 39, 165; LGBTQ community infiltrated by, 126–127 homonormativity: Banks on, 135; colonialism and, 125–126; racism in relation to, 118–119; White, 118–119, 135–136 homophobia, 158

Index homosexuality: anti-homosexuality bills, 158; APA on, 7; birth of identity for, 25–26; in China, 82, 90; DL, 171, 185, 190n5; Ghana context of, 160–162; in India, 38–39; Iran illegality of, 51; in Middle East, 34–35; same-sex marriage, 227, 228, 229–230; “straight acting” strategy regarding, 171; in U.S. military, 28; U.S. trend in acceptance of, 226–227 hope: concrete utopias for, 187; for future, 277; Jotería game for, 189; Muñoz on, 182–183; for queer of color, 189–190 IC. See intercultural communication identity: naming process connection to, 197; narratives, 224; as performance, 233–234; power relationship with, 10. See also specific identity types IGRA rodeo. See International Gay Rodeo Association rodeo imperialism: closet paradigm, 20; from homonationalism, 32, 39, 165; LGBTQI global model as, 38–39 inclusivity: Black lesbian women struggle for, 231–232; international framing for, 123; of Latinx culture, 100, 101; potentiality of, 56–58 India: Fire on sexuality in, 34; homosexuality in, 38–39 indigenous sexuality, 32–33 intercultural communication (IC): birth of, 1–2; decolonization of, push for, 143, 153–154; dialogue/discussion on future of, 264–265; dialogue/discussion on queer studies connections to, 261–264; hope for, 189; intersectionality as framework of, 241; power relations with, 1; process of, 19; queer of color as, questioning, 181–183; queer visibility in, lack of, 142–143; research on sexuality and, 21–22; role of, 1. See also queer intercultural communication interlocking oppression: Chávez on, 198; types of, 157 international framing: colonialism in relation to, 125–126; contradiction of, 124; for inclusivity, 123

285

International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) rodeo: acceptance and support from, 135; arrival to first, 117–118; Banks participation in, 130–135, 136; charrería rodeo relations with, 127–128, 129; decolonization and, 130–135; homonationalism in, 124; insecurities with researching, 121; opening ceremony of, 122–123; patriotism alignment with, 124; Queens and Cowboys as introduction to, 121–122; reflection on, 135–136; research on, 119–122; White homoexceptionalism in, 122–127; White homonormativity culture in, 135–136; White queer colonialism in, 127–130 interracial gay couple: “Chinese top, British bottom” regarding, 87–91; marriage of, 85; racial stereotypes around, 90–91; RMIUC and J.T. as, 79. See also Chinese gay Internet celebrities intersectional activism: Black transgender women in relation to, 245–249; Queer Appalachia for, 243 intersectionality: Black feminist, 240, 241; Crenshaw as mother of, 251; Crenshaw on, 8, 162–163; for deconstruction, 8; as IC framework, 241; methodology of, 8–9; normativity disrupted by, 67; Pariah portrayal of, 233; queer of color criticism and, 162–164; Sasso relevance of, 173; sexuality in relation to, 40n1; sexual nonnormativity and, 157; thick, 8–9; White queer colonialism failure to acknowledge, 129–130; work to be done on, 251–253 “intersectional reflexivity,” 70 Iran: homosexuality illegality in, 51; human rights organizations in, 39; modernity in, 34–35; visit to, 55–56; visit to, risks of, 54–55 Iranian American queer women: assumptions on, 57–58; family relations, 51–52, 54, 55–56, 58–59; inspiration for, 50–51; panic attack suffered by, 55–56; personal narrative of, 50–59; pressures for, 53–54; sexual identity issues for, 47

286

Index

Japan, 29–30 Japan Association for the Lesbian and Gay Movement (OCCUR), 30 JIIC. See Journal of International and Intercultural Communication Johnson, E. P., 131 The Josh & Eddie Show: Chinese gay Internet celebrities from, 79; on Master R’s Channel, 84–85 Jotería, 190n1; concrete utopia for, 184–185, 187; definition of, 182; philosophy, 186–187 Jotería game, 190n1; character card significance, 185–186; for decolonization, 187, 190n3; dialogic performance regarding, 180–181; as education, 185–186; for hope, 189; Lotería game compared to, 184; politics of, 188–189; social justice advocated with, 188; vignettes, 184, 188 Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (JIIC): field of inquiry in, 3; key word search in, 21; queer of color articles in, 183; queer voices absent from, 143; special dialogue issue within, 180; special issue of, 3, 67, 182–183; on violence of normativity, 67 J.T. See Taylor, Josh

Latinx population, 114n3; activism by, 199; fear of, 103; Jotería game portrayal of queer, 185–186; recognition of, 108–109; U.S. national attitude toward, 101; U.S. relationship building with, 103–104, 112 Lawrence v. Texas (2003), 229 legibility, 33–37 LGBTIQ+ individuals, 158, 167–168, 169, 170, 171 LGBTQ community: Black lesbian women relations with, 229, 230; connections within, 210; heteronormativity overlooking concerns of, 1; homonationalism infiltrating, 126–127; queer of color depicted in, 197 LGBTQIA+ individuals, 6, 12n1 LGBTQI global model, 38–39 LGBTQI+ visibility politics, 172–173 liberalism: of PIC, 64; of sexual identity, 9–10 liberatory pedagogy: of PCARE, 64; PCARE advocating, 73; performative pedagogy relations to, 68–69; QTRLP, 66–68, 70–73, 73 Lotería game: fear of playing, 181; Jotería game compared to, 184; vignettes, 179, 181 Loving in the War Years (Moraga), 260

knowledge, vernacular, 208–209 knowledge and power: homosexuality influenced by, 25–26; sexuality conceptualized by, 23–24 Kong, Ergou, 87, 94 Kugle, S. A., 52

Manalansan, M. F.: on closet paradigm, 164; on sexuality and migration, 144, 146, 146–147; on translations, 150 marginalization: of differences, 2; from heteronormativity, 31–32; personal narrative for overcoming, 48–49; scholarly, 22; from whiteness, 128 marketing mix: elements of, 202; place, 204; price, 203; product, 202–203; promotion, 204 Martin, Ricky, 36 Martínez, Ernesto Javier, 180–181 masculinity: Black lesbian women, 236n1; crisis, 89–90; remasculinization strategy, 87–88, 91 McLelland, M., 29 methodology: of belonging, 9–10; CPT as relevant, 234–235; of differences, 10; of intersectionality, 8–9; QIC

Latinx culture: Día de los Muertos origins in, 100; inclusivity of, 100, 101; Jotería game of, 180–181, 184–186, 187–189, 190n1, 190n3; Jotería in, 182, 184–185, 186–187, 190n1; Lotería game in, 179, 181, 184; ofrenda construction influenced by, 107 Latinx gay/bisexual men: “End the Epidemic” initiatives for, 195; HIV impact on, 199–200; PrEP initiative for, 200–201; social marketing PrEP for HIV prevention of, 205–211

Index implications of, 37–38 Mexico: charrería rodeo in, 127–128, 128–129; sexual systems in, 26, 27–28 Middle East: homosexuality in, 34–35; sexual identity in, 28; sexual orientalism impacting, 32; sexual systems in, 28. See also Iran migration and sexuality, 144, 146, 146–147 Mizock, L., 249, 250 Mock, Janet, 244 modernity: in Iran, 34–35; LGBTQIA+ and, 6; sign of, 3 Moraga, Cherríe: inspiration from, 50–51; on queerness, 260 morphology, 251 mummy-baby relationship, 32–33 Muñoz, J. E.: on concrete utopias, 73–74, 159, 187; disidentification defined by, 166; on future, 267; on hope, 182–183; Jotería in relation to, 182; on queer aesthetic, 186; on queerness, 158–159, 259; on queer worldmaking, 73–74 Mu Zimei, 83 Najmabadi, A., 34–35 naming process: identity connection to, 197; power as key element to, 197; social marketing critique, 206–207 narratives: identity, 224; of intelligibility, 180–181; personal, 48–50, 50–59; social hierarchy promoted by, 19 narrative trespass, 47 Native American sexuality, 33 Nolan, D., 223, 224 normalization, 24 normativity: “Chinese top, British bottom” for questioning, 91; sexual nonnormativity compared to, 20; U.S. citizenship in relation to, 101–102, 106; violence of, 67 Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), 230 object choice, 27 OCCUR. See Japan Association for the Lesbian and Gay Movement ofrenda: competition, 111; construction of, 107; digitization of, 109; floating, 110; as focus, 100; function of, 107–108;

287

integration of, 103–104 Ong, J. C., 151–152 oppression, interlocking, 157, 198 osha pedagogy, 271–272 Òsunality, 24 the Others, 2, 5, 10, 32, 80, 101–102, 261–262 Page, K., 249, 250 Pariah: Black lesbian woman as leading character of, 217; Black lesbian women representation progress following, 224–225; boundaries of belonging redefined by, 224, 234–235; cultural impact moments of, 225–228; definition of the term, 219; focus of studying, 219–220; gay rights movement cultural norms rejected by, 225–226, 229, 232–234; George review of, 225, 226; historical impact moments of, 221–225; implications of, 231–232; inclusivity struggle portrayal in, 231–232; intersectionality portrayed in, 233; political impact moments of, 228–231; Rees as director/writer of, 217–218; She Hate Me compared to, 221; storyline of, 218 patriotism, 124 PCARE. See Prison Communication, Activism, Research, and Education perception process, three-step, 248–249 performative pedagogy, 68–69 personal narrative: of Iranian American queer women, 50–59; in QIC, 48–50 perspective by incongruity, 104–105 phallocentrism, 24 PIC. See prison industrial complex politics: of Jotería game, 188–189; LGBTQI+ visibility, 172–173; of research in QIC, 37–39 politics of belonging: CPT and, 220–221; implications of, 9; Pariah cultural impact moments and, 221–231; Pariah historical impact moments and, 221–225; Pariah political impact moments and, 228–231; Yuval-Davis’s work on, 217 pornography, 80

288

Index

postcolonial theory: Africa and queer, 162–165; goal of, 164–165; queerly ambivalence in relation to, 166; for translations, 148; regarding whiteness, 128 potentiality: of hope, 189; of inclusivity, 56–58; of queerness, 48, 183 power: hegemony and, 31–33; IC relations with, 1; identity relationship with, 10; knowledge and, 23–24, 25–26; naming processes key element as, 197; social location connection to, 231 pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP): community identification critique on marketing of, 210–211; community knowledge critique on marketing of, 208–209; as HIV initiative, 195; HIV reduction from, 200–201; naming process critique on marketing of, 206–207; social marketing for HIV prevention, 205–211 prison abolition: commitment to, 70; PCARE for, 64; as queer worldmaking, 73–74 Prison Communication, Activism, Research, and Education (PCARE): goal of, 65; liberatory pedagogy advocated by, 73; for prison abolition, 64 prison industrial complex (PIC): liberalism of, 64; liberatory pedagogy commitment to eliminating, 69; queer and transgenders in, 64–66; students communicating with those in, 70–73 QIC. See queer intercultural communication QTRLP. See queer and trans relational liberatory pedagogy Queens and Cowboys, 121–122 queer: academic homes, 143–145; aesthetic, 186; dialogue/discussion on definitions of, 259–261; JIIC search on, 21; Jotería game portrayal of, 185–186; mentoring, 144–145; in PIC, 64–66; postcolonial theory in Africa, 162–165; relationality, 67–68; slippages, 148–151, 153; translations, search for, 141–142, 146; visibility, IC lacking,

142–143; Western formations, 268–269; worldmaking, 73–74. See also specific queer types queer and trans relational liberatory pedagogy (QTRLP): performance of, 70–73; within QIC tradition, 66–68; queer worldmaking in relation to, 73 Queer Appalachia, 243 queer intercultural communication (QIC): Africa limitations in, 159; background of, 1–4; Black Queer Identity Matrix and, 232–234; commonalities of, 196; complexity of studying, 22; conceptual foundations of, 4–7; critical issues in, 22–37; critical performance ethnography for, 120; crossroads of, 267; decoloniality theme of, 270–272; dialogue/discussion on advice for, 265; elements for supporting research on, 37–38; fat and disability studies theme of, 272–274; as field of inquiry, 7–10; future visions on, 268–277; geolocation-based, 145–148; for HIV social marketing, 196–199; methodology of belonging in, 9–10; methodology of differences in, 10; methodology of intersectionality in, 8–9; personal narrative in, 48–50; politics of research in, 37–39; potentiality of inclusivity in, 56–58; QTRLP within tradition of, 66–68; queer mentoring for researching, 144–145; question of cultural translation and legibility in, 33–37; question of hegemony and power in, 31–33; question of sexual identity in, 28–31; question of sexuality in, 23–26; question of sexual systems in, 26–28; relationality/coalition and transing themes of, 274–276; Western queer formations theme of, 268–269. See also specific topics queerly ambivalence: “classy” as enactment of, 167–171; as concrete utopia enactment, 159; definition of, 166, 172; disidentification in relation to, 166 Queer Nation, 260–261

Index queerness: disability in relation to, 7; in Ghana, linguistic code of, 158; isolation of, 149; Moraga on, 260; Muñoz on, 158–159, 259; potentiality of, 48, 183; Sasso navigation strategy for, 168–169; as state of being, 142; as strategy, 3 queer of color: criticism, 162–164; emergence of critiques on, 5; gay rights movement exclusion of, 227–228; hope for, 189–190; as IC, questioning, 181–183; JIIC articles on, 183; naming process difficulties for, 197 queer theory: abstraction tendency in, 112; Africa encouragement for, 173; regarding Banks, 131; Chávez on deficiency of, 182; criticisms against, 4–5; mission of, 4; perspective by incongruity and, 104–105; postcolonial, 162–165; sexuality focus of, 196 racialized criminality: factor of, 70, 71–73; in schools, 63 racism: homonormativity in relation to, 118–119; in IGRA rodeo culture, 136 Rees, Dee, 217–218 reflexivity: for critical performance ethnography, 120; intersectional, 70 relationality: coalition, 274–276; queer and transgender, 67–68 remasculinization strategy, 87–88, 91 research: key themes of, 4, 7–10; politics in QIC, 37–39; queer mentoring for, 144–145; on sexuality and IC, 21–22; summary, 10–12 RMIUC. See Ye Fan same-sex marriage: gay rights movement focus as, 228; legalization of, 228, 229–230; Obergefell v. Hodges ruling on, 230; support rising for, 227 Sasso: on “classy,” 167–171; definition of, 158; intersectionality relevance to, 173; LGBTQI+ visibility politics impacting, 172–173; queerness navigation strategy by, 168–169; as second-class citizens, 161–162 #SayHerName campaign: as AAPF initiative, 240; allyship building with, 249–251; Black transgender women

289

inclusion in, 247–248; “femme” and, 252–253; growth of, 246; imperfection of, 253; report on state violence, 240–241, 249–250; sensationalization strategy of, 247 school-to-prison pipeline, 63–64, 74n1 Second Chance Pell Grant program, 65 sex: cyber, 25; JIIC search on, 21 sexual aim, 27–28 sexual identity: Arabic terminology on, 35–36; Iranian American queer women issues with, 47; in Japan, 29–30; liberalism of, 9–10; in Middle East, 28; in South Africa, 30–31; Western queer formations impacting, 268–269. See also specific sexual identities sexuality: BDSM redefining, 24–25; Fire on, 34; heteronormativity as barrier to, 47; IC and research on, 21–22; indigenous, 32–33; intersectionality in relation to, 40n1; JIIC search on, 21; knowledge and power conceptualizing, 23–24; migration and, 144, 146, 146–147; normalization of, 24; queer theory focusing on, 196; question of, 23–26; social constructionism impacting, 39–40 sexual nonnormativity: colonialism impacting, 160–161; criminality of, 63; intersectionality and, 157; normativity compared to, 20 sexual orientalism: Asian gay men and, 79; Middle East impacted by, 32 sexual systems, 26–28 She Hate Me, 221 sissyphobia, 171 slippages: definition of, 141; possibilities in, 147; queer, 148–151, 153 social constructionism, 39–40 social hierarchy, 19 social justice: Jotería game advocating, 188; narratives of intelligibility for, 180–181. See also activism social location, 231 social marketing: audience segmentation for, 201–202; awareness from, 212; as communication device, 195–196; community identification critique of, 210–211; community knowledge

290

Index

critique of, 208–209; future considerations on, 212; for health promotion, 201–205; marketing mix for, 202–205; naming process critique of, 206–207; place in, 204; popularity in health promotion, 201; of PrEP for HIV prevention, 205–211; price in, 203; product in, 202–203; promotion in, 204; QIC for HIV, 196–199 social media: #BlackLivesMatter on, 239–240, 245, 246, 247; for community mobilization, 243; deadnaming story on, 244–245; #GirlsLikeUs on, 244; hashtags role on, 243–244; #SayHerName campaign on, 240–241, 246, 247–248, 249–250, 249–251, 252–253; transgender support network on, 242–243 sodomy: as forbidden act, 25–26; Lawrence v. Texas ruling on, 229 South Africa: indigenous sexuality in, 32–33; sexual identity in, 30–31 spheres of desire, 68 spheres of intimacy, 68 state violence: against Black transgender women, 239, 240–241, 246; #SayHerName report on, 240–241, 249–250; sensationalization of, 247 “straight acting” strategy, 171 students: on #BlackLivesMatter, 245; free world, 64–65, 70, 75n3; on PIC, learning, 64–66; QTRLP performed by, 70–73; in school-to-prison pipeline, 63–64, 74n1 surrogacy, 92 tactical interventions, 105 Taylor, Josh (J.T.): “Chinese top, British bottom” and, 90–91; in interracial gay relationship, 79; Kong on, 87, 94; rise of, 84–87 thick intersectionalities, 8–9 This Bridge Called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldúa), 50–51 three-step perception process, 248–249 TPOCC. See Trans People of Color Coalition transfeminism, 71

transgenders: APA on, 7; deadnaming of, 244–245; discrimination at IGRA rodeo, 119–120; Jotería game portraying, 185; in PIC, 64–66; QTRLP for, 66–68, 70–73, 73; relationality, 67–68; social media for supporting fellow, 242–243; TPOCC article on violence against, 247; whiteness connection to, 251–252. See also Black transgender women transing, 274–276 translations: digital queer intercultural, 151–153; embodied, 38, 39; failure of, 147; legibility and cultural, 33–37; Manalansan on, 150; postcolonial theory for, 148; search for queer, 141–142, 146 Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC), 247 Tuskegee syphilis experiment, 203 United States: Asian gay men stereotype in, 80–81; citizenship, 101–102, 106; HIV epidemic, 199–200; homonationalism from, 32, 39; homosexuality acceptance trend in, 226–227; IC born in, 1–2; international framing in context of, 123–124, 125–126; toward Latinx population, national attitude, 101; Latinx population relationship building with, 103–104, 112; PrEP approval in, 200–201; queer activism in, 30; sexual systems in, 26–27; sissyphobia in, 171; social marketing for health promotion in, 201–205; social marketing of PrEP in, 205–211; TPOCC on transgender violence in, 247; White homoexceptionalism, 122–127; White lesbianism, 131–132, 132–133; White queer colonialism, 127–130, 134. See also Día de los Muertos celebrations U.S. military: foreign bases, expansion of, 2; homosexuality in, 28 vernacular knowledge, 208–209 video pornography, 80 violence: anti-LGBTIQ+, 158, 167–168, 169, 170, 171; hate crime of, 250–251;

Index of normativity, 67; state, 239, 240–241, 246, 247, 249–250; TPOCC article on transgender, 247 Visage, Michelle, 169, 170 Wall, Sasha, 250–251 Watermelon Woman, 222 Western queer formations, 268–269 White gay formations, 9–10 White homoexceptionalism, 122–127 White homonormativity: background on, 118–119; examination of, 119; in IGRA rodeo culture, 135–136 White-hunters concept, 169–170 White lesbianism: stereotype, 131–132, 132–133; television characters, 221–222 whiteness: Asian gay men impacted by, 80; civility in relation to, 63; of gay rights movement, 229; marginalization from,

291

128; queer theory and, 4–5; transgender term connection to, 251–252 White queer colonialism, 127–130, 134 Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards (Najmabadi), 34–35 World War II postwar era, 2 Ye Fan (RMIUC): “Chinese top, British bottom” and, 87–90; as father, 92; as hero, 88–89; in interracial gay relationship, 79; Kong on, 87, 94; Master R’s Channel of, 84–85; positivity toward, 87; remasculinization strategy of, 87–88, 91; rise of, 84–87; uniqueness of, 86 Yuval-Davis, Nira: on identity narratives, 224; politics of belonging work from, 217; on power and social location connection, 231

About the Editors and Contributors

EDITORS Shinsuke Eguchi (PhD, Howard University) is associate professor of intercultural communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. Their research interests focus on global and transcultural studies; queer of color critique; race, gender, and intersectionality; Asian/Pacific/American studies; and performance studies. Their most recent work has appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Popular Communication, Howard Journal of Communication, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Journal of Homosexuality. Bernadette Marie Calafell (PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) is inaugural department chair and professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Gonzaga University. Her research is focused on queer of color theories, women of color feminisms, critical rhetoric, performance studies, and monstrosity. She is author of Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture and Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance. CONTRIBUTORS Shadee Abdi (PhD, University of Denver) is assistant professor of communication in the Department of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. She is a critical cultural communication scholar whose research interests include transnational communication, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, media studies, and performances of Iranian diaspora. Broadly, her work explores how conflicting discourses complicate and en293

294

About the Editors and Contributors

hance our intersectional understandings of identity and power relative to race, culture, sexuality, gender, nationality, religion, ability, class, and family. She is particularly interested in how narratives are used to simultaneously resist and reinforce dominant cultural discourses within familial and mediated contexts and across borders. Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui (PhD, University of Denver) is assistant professor of communication studies at San Francisco State University. Her research engages critical rhetoric, political communication, new media, gender and sexuality studies, transnational feminism, and social change. Luis Manuel Andrade (EdD, California State University, Fullerton) is associate professor of communication studies in the Communication and Media Studies Department at Santa Monica College. Andrade’s research interests focus on educational equity, Latina/o student education, rhetorical criticism, performance studies, intercultural communication, and philosophy. His most recent work appeared in the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, Text and Performance Quarterly, and the Journal of College Student Development. Godfried Asante (PhD, University of New Mexico) is assistant professor of communication studies at Drake University. His research interests focus on social identities such as race, class, gender, and sexuality in transnational contexts. The primary goal of his research is to explore how social inequalities and human rights violations are enacted, reproduced, and normalized— specifically, how social actors are positioned in systems of power relations to create subjugated subject positions. He has published essays in journals including the Howard Journal of Communications, Communication Theory, and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. His recent paper, “Anti-LGBT Violence and the Ambivalent Colonial Discourses of Ghanaian Evangelical Charismatic Church Leaders,” received a “Top Faculty Paper” in the Intercultural Communication division of the Western States Communication Association and has been published in the Howard Journal of Communications. Ahmet Atay (PhD, Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is associate professor of communication at the College of Wooster. His research revolves around cultural studies, media studies, and critical intercultural communication. In particular, he focuses on diasporic experiences and cultural identity formations of diasporic individuals; political and social complexities of city life, such as immigrant and queer experiences; the usage of new media technologies in different settings; and the notion of home. He is the author of Globalization’s Impact on Identity Formation: Queer Diasporic Males in

About the Editors and Contributors

295

Cyberspace (2015) and the coeditor of eight books. His scholarship has appeared in a number of journals and edited books. Nicole Files-Thompson (PhD, Howard University) is associate professor and chair of mass communications at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests focus on engaging theory, practice, and epistemology of marginalized groups through intercultural, interdisciplinary paradigms and on the scholarship of teaching and learning in media studies, women’s studies, Black studies, intercultural communication, and tourism studies. Her most recent work has appeared in Women and Language, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Communication, Culture, & Critique. Robert Gutierrez-Perez (PhD, University of Denver) is assistant professor of communication and culture in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Gutierrez-Perez’s research interests focus on critical intercultural communication, performance studies, Jotería studies, and queer of color critique. He recently published a coedited collection titled This Bridge We Call Communication: Anzaldúan Approaches to Theory, Method, and Praxis, and is the current editor of Border-Lines: Journal of the Latino Research Center. Deion Hawkins (PhD, George Mason University) is lecturer and director of debate in the Department of Communication Studies at Emerson College. With a focus on health communication, his research utilizes intercultural theory to combat health disparities facing the Black community. Outside of health communication, he is a nationally recognized debate coach, securing over 10 national champions. Sheena C. Howard (PhD, Howard University) is associate professor of communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Rider University. Her research interests focus on queer of color critique, intersectionality, popular culture analysis, and rhetorical studies. Her most recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Lesbian Studies, QED: Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, and Routledge’s Critical Articulations of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Sophie Jones (MA, University of Denver) is a doctoral student of intercultural communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. Her research interests include transgender studies, critical/intersectional queer studies, and performance studies. Benny LeMaster (PhD, Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is assistant professor of critical/cultural communication and performance studies in the

296

About the Editors and Contributors

Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. Their research interests include queer of color critique, transfeminisms, intersectionality, and mundane performances of culture, identity, and embodiment. Their recent work has appeared in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Liminalities, Communication Teacher, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, QED: A Journal in LGBTQ Worldmaking, and Women’s Studies in Communication. Ryan M. Lescure (MA, San Francisco State University) is a lecturer of communication studies at San Francisco State University. His research primarily focuses on the intersections between communication, gender, sexuality, media, culture, memory, and power. Hannah R. Long (MA, Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is a doctoral candidate of intercultural communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. Her research interests focus on social regulation of the body, particularly through the lenses of queer theories, fat studies, intersectionality, disability, whiteness, and performance studies. Her most recent work has appeared in The Journal of Homosexuality. Meggie Mapes (PhD, Southern Illinois University Carbondale) is the introductory course director in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. Her research interests include critical pedagogy, feminist rhetoric, carceral logics, and critical/cultural studies. Her recent work has been published in Communication Education, Communication Teacher, and QED: A Journal of LGBTQ Worldmaking. Melina McConatha (PhD, University of Delaware) is assistant professor of human services in the Department of Psychology and Human Services at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests focus on race, gender, sexuality, and intersectionality in violence prevention and environmental justice. Her most recent work has appeared in the Journal for Aging and Social Change, the International Journal of Diverse Identities, and the Society for Media Psychology and Technology’s The Amplifier. Dawn Marie D. McIntosh (PhD, University of Denver) is an independent scholar located in Colorado. Her research is focused in whiteness studies, feminist of color theories, qualitative research methods, performance studies, and critical rhetoric. She is the coeditor of Interrogating the Communicative Power of Whiteness.

About the Editors and Contributors

297

Megan Elizabeth Morrissey (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder) is assistant professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Texas. Her research interests focus on marginalization and belonging and engage the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship through critical rhetorical frameworks. Her most recent work has appeared in Women’s Studies in Communication, the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, the Southern Communication Journal, and Critical Studies in Media Communication. Thomas K. Nakayama (PhD, University of Iowa) is professor of communication studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. His research interests lie at the intersection of rhetoric, intercultural communication, and critical theory. He is coauthor of Intercultural Communication in Contexts, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, Human Communication in Society, and Communication in Society. He is coeditor of Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity and The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication. He serves on a number of editorial boards and is the founding editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. He is also cofounding editor of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. He is a former Fulbrighter at the Université de Mons-Hainaut (now the Université de Mons) in Belgium. Andrew Spieldenner (PhD, Howard University) is assistant professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, San Marcos. Dr. Spieldenner’s research is at the intersection of health and intercultural communication focused in HIV and the LGBTQ community. A longtime HIV activist, Dr. Spieldenner currently serves as vice chair of the United States People Living with HIV Caucus and as the North American delegate to UNAIDS. Gust A. Yep (PhD, University of Southern California) is professor of communication studies, graduate faculty of sexuality studies, and faculty in the EdD program in educational leadership at San Francisco State University. His research focuses on queer studies and communication, critical culture and communication, and trans studies and communication, with an emphasis on racialized sexual- and gender-minority communities nationally and transnationally. In addition to three books and a monograph, he has authored about 100 articles in (inter)disciplinary journals and anthologies. Anthony Rosendo Zariñana (MA, Southern Illinois University) is a doctoral candidate of intercultural communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. His research interests approach critical communication pedagogy, decolonial epistemologies,

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About the Editors and Contributors

and queer of color critique from a vantage point of intercultural communication and performance studies. Tianyang Zhou (MA, University of Leicester) is doctoral candidate in media and cultural studies in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex, and an associate lecturer in the School of Media at the University of Brighton. His research is focused on LGBTQ media cultures, digital culture and politics, celebrity studies, and Chinese media.