Citation and Censorship: The Politics of Talking About the Sexual Politics of Israel

In response to critics’ claims that a discussion of sexuality and nationalism vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bears no relation to the author’s previous work, or to such discussions within the US or European contexts, this paper details the complex interconnections between Israeli gay and lesbian rights and the continued oppression of Palestinians. The first section examines existing discourses of what the author has previously called “homonationalism,” or the process by which certain forms of gay and lesbian sexuality are folded into the national body as the Muslim/Arab Other is cast as perversely queer, within Israel and the diasporas. The operations of homonationalism ensure that no discussion of gay and lesbian rights in Israel is independent from the state’s actions toward Palestine/Palestinians. The second section contains a critique of Israel’s practices of “pinkwashing” in the US and Europe. In order to redirect focus away from critiques of its repressive actions toward Palestine, Israel has attempted to utilize its relative “gay-friendliness” as an example of its commitment to Western “democratic” ideals. Massive public relations campaigns such as “Brand Israel” work to establish Israel’s reputation within the US and Europe as cosmopolitan, progressive, Westernized and democratic as compared with the backward, repressive, homophobic Islamic nations, which, in turn, serves to solidify Israel’s aggression as a position of the “defense” of democracy and freedom. The final section looks at the ways in which accusations of “anti-Semitism” function in academic and activist contexts to suppress critiques of the implicit nationalism within Israeli sexual politics.     

The Uniform Civil Code: The Politics of the Universal in Postcolonial India

This article speaks of a debate in contemporary India: that surrounding the validity of enacting a civil code that applies uniformly to all communities and religions in the state. In certain feminist arguments, such a code is seen as possibly providing a sphere of rights to Indian women that is alternative to the rights – or wrongs – given to them by the plural religious laws, which form the basis of the civil law in India. India, however, is a heterogeneous polity, encompassing a diversity of cultures and religions, some dominant and others forming minorities. Given these differences, some critics see the feminist call for a Uniform Civil Code as an essentialist move that prioritises gender over other agendas and politics. They argue that the site of the ‚universal’ in this feminist move is a liberal site that inherently excludes marginalised Others and benefits the dominant subjects in India. In my article, I contest this critique and question whether the site of the universal and its authorial subject in postcolonial India is, in fact, an exclusionary liberal ruse of power. I draw insights from the history of the formation of the postcolonial nation-state in India to posit an experience of the state and the universal within it, which is alternative to the Western liberal model. The aim of this article is, therefore, not so much to debate the in/validity of a Uniform Civil Code, as to address certain contemporary post-structuralist critiques of the site of the universal in postcolonial India and posit a departure from them, based on perspectives drawn from history.     

From heterosexual feminist to political lesbian: The painful transition

This paper is about the inseparability of the personal from the political from feminist research. It's personal because it comes from my own experience and it's political because it concerns the exercise of power. It is also a piece of research because I would argue that the social production of contradictions involved in living as a feminist is no less available as research when these contradictions come from our own personal experience. In other words my personal relationship with a man is, for me, just as valid a piece of research as going out into the ‘field’ armed with a tape recorder and interview schedule might be—indeed, were we as feminist social scientists to concentrate our energies more on the personal, we might go some way towards bridging the gap between feminist theory and feminist practice.     

The Role of Spirituality Versus Religiosity in Adolescent Psychosocial Adjustment

This study investigated the interaction between religiosity (defined as church attendance) and spirituality (defined as personal beliefs in God or a higher power) on psychosocial adjustment. Four groups were created capturing 4 different religious/spiritual orientations. Differences were assessed between the groups on a wide range of psychosocial indicators. Participants included 6578 adolescents ages 13–18 encompassing a school district in Ontario, Canada. Results were striking with regards to the consistency with which religious youth reported more positive adjustment than did non-religious youth, regardless of level of spirituality. Spirituality may not be as salient an influence on behavior as religiosity. The secondary analyses indicated that the advantage for religiosity may not be entirely unique to church attendance, but rather a function of being part of any community. However, where religiosity may be uniquely associated with adjustment (over and above benefits associated with participation in any community) is in lower levels of risk behaviors.

From autobiography to biography: Roma the First

Roma Flinders Mitchell, 1913–2000, AC, DBE, Queen's Counsel, Judge, Founding Chair of the Human Rights Commission, Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, Governor of South Australia, was the first woman in Australia—often also the first in the British Commonwealth—to gain the positions and honours that gild any narrative of her life. How did she do this? What was it like for her? Such questions follow immediately. And then, making it more complicated, what else was there in her life besides achievements and honours? What other doors opened before her as she moved through her days? And what doors closed? How did she choose some doors and not others?

These are questions that we are addressing in our biography of Roma Flinders Mitchell. They are not questions that we will consider here, though. Rather, our subject in this article is not our narrative but Roma Mitchell's own story of her life. It develops into a three‐stranded narrative, composed principally of interviews for press and television, predominantly during the last decades of her life. It is therefore a story shaped by her recognition of herself as exceptional, ‘Roma the First’, and also by other people's desires that she be—for them—precisely that: ‘Roma the First’. This is the ‘authorised’ narrative of Roma Mitchell's life, the story that she told herself. Many regard it as unquestionably definitive, and therefore determining. Yet, it does, itself, prompt an array of questions.

The story is set in Australia, ‘the last of lands, the emptiest’ wrote poet A.D. Hope, in a time that historian Michael Ignatieff deemed ‘“the worst century there has ever been,” in wanton destruction of human life and in murderous unreason masking itself as reason’. More specifically, it takes its beginning from the early years of the twentieth century, in the city of Adelaide, core of a British colony founded less than a century earlier, on the plain that had basked in the custodianship of the Kaurna people before the arrival of the ships from Britain, roughly in the middle of the southern curve defining the Australian continent. The forms that appear in the story derive from those origins: the British law which the colonists practised, with all its theatrical paraphernalia and terminology; a gradually developing copy of Westminster government, but with deference to British rule and allegiance always observed; education adopted from schools and universities in England and Scotland. Only in its churches was it distinct, for, among all of Britain's colonies in Australia, South Australia was the ‘paradise of dissent’. Here, on the edge of the anglophone world, this story did not so much unfold as gather itself together and take off.