Media matter, particularly to social minorities like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Rather than one homogenised idea of the ‘global gay’, what we find today is a range of historically and culturally specific expressions of gender and sexuality, which are reflected and explored across an ever increasing range of media outlets. This collection zooms in on a number of facets of this kaleidoscope, each chapter discussing the intersection of a particular European context and a particular medium with its affordances and limitations. While traditional mass media form the starting point of this book, the primary focus is on digital media such as blogs, social media and online dating sites. All contributions are based on recent, original empirical research, using a plethora of qualitative methods to offer a holistic view on the ways media matter to particular LGBTQ individuals and communities. Together the chapters cover the diversity of European countries and regions, of LGBTQ communities, and of the contemporary media ecology. Resisting the urge to extrapolate, they argue for specificity, contextualisation and a provincialized understanding of the connections between media, culture, gender and sexuality.

Media matter, particularly to social minorities like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Rather than one homogenised idea of the ‘global gay’, what we find today is a range of historically and culturally specific expressions of gender and sexuality, which are reflected and explored across an ever increasing range of media outlets. This collection zooms in on a number of facets of this kaleidoscope, each chapter discussing the intersection of a particular European context and a particular medium with its affordances and limitations. While traditional mass media form the starting point of this book, the primary focus is on digital media such as blogs, social media and online dating sites. All contributions are based on recent, original empirical research, using a plethora of qualitative methods to offer a holistic view on the ways media matter to particular LGBTQ individuals and communities. Together the chapters cover the diversity of European countries and regions, of LGBTQ communities, and of the contemporary media ecology. Resisting the urge to extrapolate, they argue for specificity, contextualisation and a provincialized understanding of the connections between media, culture, gender and sexuality.

This book traces the turbulent history of queer visibility in the Irish media to explore the processes by which a regionally based media system shaped queer identities within a highly conservative and religious population. The book details the emergence of an LGBTQ rights movement in Ireland and charts how this burgeoning movement utilised the media for the liberatory potential of advancing LGBTQ rights. However, mainstream media institutions also exploited queer identities for economic purposes, which, coupled with the eruption of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, disrupted the mainstreaming goals of queer visibility. Drawing on industrial, societal and production culture determinants, the author identifies the shifting contours of queer visibility in the Irish media, uncovering the longstanding relationship between LGBTQ organising and the Irish media. This book is suitable for students and scholars in gender studies, media studies, cultural studies and LGBTQ studies.

Europe is a popular destination for LGBTQ people seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. Yet, while European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities and a number of states pride themselves on their acceptance of sexual diversity, the image of European tolerance and the reality faced by LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers are often quite different. To engage with these conflicting discourses, Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe brings together scholars from politics, sociology, urban studies, anthropology and law to analyse how and why queer individuals migrate to or seek asylum in Europe, as well as the legal, social and political frameworks they are forced to navigate to feel at home or to regularise their status in the destination societies. The subjects covered include LGBTQ Latino migrants’ relationship with queer and diasporic spaces in London; diasporic consciousness of queer Polish, Russian and Brazilian migrants in Berlin; the role of the Council of Europe in shaping legal and policy frameworks relating to queer migration and asylum; the challenges facing bisexual asylum seekers; queer asylum and homonationalism in the Netherlands; and the role of space, faith and LGBTQ organisations in Germany, Italy, the UK and France in supporting queer asylum seekers.

This collection explores the representation and performance of queer youth in media cultures, primarily examining TV, film and online new media. Specific themes of investigation include the context of queer youth suicide and educational strategies to avert this within online new media, and the significance of coming out videos produced online.

This edited collection brings together original empirical and theoretical insights into the complex set of relations which exist between age, gender, sexualities and the media in Europe. This book investigates how engagements with media reflect people’s constructions and understandings of gender in society, as well as articulations of age in relation to gender and sexuality; the ways in which negotiations of gender and sexuality inform people’s practices with media, and not least how mediated representations may reinforce or challenge social hierarchies based in differences of gender, sexual orientation and age. In doing so, it showcases new and innovative research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory. Including contributions from both established and early career scholars across Europe, it engages with a wide range of hotly debated topics within the context of gender, sexuality and the media, informing academic, public and policy agendas. This collection will be of interest to students and researchers in gender studies, media studies, film and television, cultural studies, sexuality, ageing, sociology and education.

"From Harvey Milk to Barney Frank, and from ACT UP to Proposition 8, in the past few decades, no political change has been more significant than the civil rights advancements of LGBTQ citizens. LGBTQ Politics is the first authoritative reader to approach the complexity of queer politics from a political science persective, bringing together original contributions from leadings scholars in the field on key issues in LGBTQ politics. These original essays cover a wide range of essential topics, including marriage equality, transgender discrimination, gay and lesbian political candidates, LGBTQ human rights advocacy, HIV prevention, and LGBTQ movements of the Global South. The volume also includes a number of critical essays that reflect upon the state of political science as a discipline that has struggled to address queer politics. Contributors draw from a variety of subfields in political science, including comparative politics, political theory, American politics, public law, and international relations. Essays that focus on mainstream institutional politics appear alongside contributions grounded in grassroots movements and critical theory. While some essays express concerns that the democratic basis of the LGBTQ movement has been undermined, others celebrate the movement's successes and offer visions for the future. A comprehensive, thought-provoking, and authoritative collection, LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader is required reading for anyone looking to learn about the politics of sexuality"--Back cover.

A half century ago gay men and lesbians were all but invisible in the media and, in turn, popular culture. With the lesbian and gay liberation movement came a profoundly new sense of homosexual community and empowerment and the emergence of gay people onto the media's stage. And yet even as the mass media have been shifting the terms of our public conversation toward a greater acknowledgment of diversity, does the emerging "visibility" of gay men and women do justice to the complexity and variety of their experience? Or is gay identity manipulated and contrived by media that are unwilling—and perhaps unable—to fully comprehend and honor it? While positive representations of gays and lesbians are a cautious step in the right direction, media expert Larry Gross argues that the entertainment and news media betray a lingering inability to break free from proscribed limitations in order to embrace the complex reality of gay identity. While noting major advances, like the opening of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore—the first gay bookstore in the country—or the rise of The Advocate from small newsletter to influential national paper, Gross takes the measure of somewhat more ambiguous milestones, like the first lesbian kiss on television or the first gay character in a newspaper comic strip.

Winner of Randy Shilts Award In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts—the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights organization, the first Institute for Sexual Science, the first sex reassignment surgeries—exploring and educating themselves and the rest of the world about new ways of understanding the human condition. In this fascinating examination of how the uninhibited urban culture of Berlin helped create our categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, Robert Beachy guides readers through the past events and developments that continue to shape and influence our thinking about sex and gender to this day.

In Everyday Violence against Black and Latinx LGBT Communities, Siobhan Brooks argues that hate crimes and violence against Black and Latinx LGBT people are the products of institutions and ideologies that exist both outside and inside of Black and Latinx communities. Brooks analyzes families, educational systems, healthcare industries, and religious spaces as institutions that can perpetuate and transform the political and cultural beliefs and attitudes that engender violence toward LGBT Black and Latinx people.