Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions

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Editors: Sandeep Bakshi (University of Le Havre), Suhraiya Jivraj (University of Kent) and
Silvia Posocco (Birkbeck, University of London)
Counterpress, Oxford, 2016

Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions contributes to the critical field of queer decolonial studies by demonstrating how sexuality, race, gender and religion intersect transnationally. The volume maps some of the specifically local issues as well as the common ones affecting queer/trans people of colour (qtpoc). The contributions are not delimited by traditional academic style but rather draw on creative inspiration to produce knowledge and insight through various styles and formats, including poetry, essays, statements, manifestos, as well as academic mash-ups. Queering coloniality and the epistemic categories that classify people means to disobey and delink from the coloniality of knowledge and of being. At this intersection, decolonial queerness is necessary not only to resist coloniality but, above all, to re-exist and re-emerge decolonially.

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Fucking Different XXY (2014)

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Break stereotypes. Create confusion. Celebrate diversity.
In order to create even more gender confusion as in his latest compilation Fucking different XXX, Kristian Petersen asked for only trans filmmakers to contribute a short film about something that is alien from their own gender concepts. Fucking Different XXY features short films Jesse (Buck Angel), Convincing Authenticity (J. Jackie Baier), Grid & Grind (Felix Endara & Sasha Wortzel), Transaction (KAy Garnellen), A Woman with a Past (Gwen Haworth), Internal Body Shots (Jasco Viefhues), and a short film about trans-woman Juliana Lev, directed by Mor Vital.

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Barbara Caspar: Who´s Afraid of Kathy Acker? (2008)

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A multi-layered work featuring animation, archival footage and interviews with the likes of William Burroughs, Carolee Schneemann and Richard Hell, Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker by Austrian artist Barbara Caspar and co-produced by Annette Pisacane (Nico Icon) and Markus Fischer, is a thoughtful and creative film biography/essay on the late outlaw writer and punk icon, whose formally inventive novels, published from the ’70s through the mid-’90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon.

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Luke Woodward: Enough Man (2006)

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Documentary meets explicit sexuality in Luke Woodward’s groundbreaking debut video about body image, relationships, sex and sexuality from the perspective of nine female-to-male (FTM) transmen and their partners. Featuring health educators, college students, sex workers, activists and artists, Enough Man navigates the terrain between objectivity and personal identity, allowing viewers into some of the most personal and rarely discussed areas of transgender life.

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Carlos Motta: Gender Talents (2013)

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GENDER TALENTS is a web-based project by artist Carlos Motta that engages movements and discourses for gender self-determination within trans and intersex communities internationally. It features an online archive of video portraits of trans and intersex activists who thoughtfully perform gender as a personal, social, and political opportunity rather than as a social condemnation. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in Colombia, Guatemala, India and the United States the portraits expose the ways that activists challenge the bio-cultural “foundations” of society and question gender norms from the perspective of sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, and disability.

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Vika Kirchenbauer: Like rats leaving a sinking ship (2012)

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Lyrically poignant yet contained, Like rats leaving a sinking ship is an intimate piece that combines personal subjectivity with the clinical objectivity of medical reports, challenging the very notions of these categories. The film is partly based on the author’s psychiatric assessments diagnosing her with ‘Gender Identity Disorder’, in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases. Along with the discourse of the legally mandatory documents for transgender people are her own personal writings that reflect upon the nature of memory – the present interpretation of the past – and question the possibility of any coherent biographic or filmic narrative.

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Kaspars Goba: Homo@LV (2010)

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Kaspars Goba worked on this film for five years. The extensive footage collected over the years enables the spectator to get an extraordinarily deep insight into the opinions and life stories of the individuals on both the ‘Pride’ and ‘NoPride’ fronts. The astonishing unearthing of Pride in Riga as shown in Kaspars Goba’s work, starting from its inception in 2005 through to the announcement of Pride not being held in Riga in 2010, enables the viewer to consider these events from a different perspective.

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Black_Women*_Space: The Black Her*Stories Project (2015)

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Screenings, film discussions, workshop organized by Black_Women*_Space
Wienwoche, 2015

The Black Her*Stories Project presents the first queer Black feminist film festival in Vienna. The selected films depict stories by and about Black LGBTIQ people (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer), bringing them to the cinema screen and thus creating decolonial and feminist resistance.

The Black Her*Stories Project utilises the medium of film to highlight and pass on queer Black feminist stories. For three nights the cinema Top Kino stands in the light of Black revolutionary resistance. From feature films to documentaries and experimental movie formats, what connects these powerful, artistic and humoristic narratives is their political relevance. Not only do queer Black feminist positions claim space, but social struggles and movements are made visible.

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Isaac Julien: The Attendant (1993)

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The plot revolves around sexual fantasies aroused in a middle-aged black male museum guard — or attendant — by a young white male visitor. Much of the action takes place after closing time. As the guard paces the galleries, a huge 19th-century painting titled “Slaves on the West Coast of Africa”, by the French artist François-Auguste Biard, comes to life, its melodramatic scene of a white master bending over a dying black slave transformed into an up-to-date, leather clad sadomasochistic grouping.

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Transgender China

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Edited by Howard Chiang Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 In the vibrant field of queer Asian studies, scholars to date have paid scant attention to transgender topics. Meanwhile, despite its already sophisticated focus on gender non-conformity, Western queer studies exhibits an equally pressing problem: the conspicuous absence of empirical and theoretical investigations of transgenderism in Northeast Asian […]

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Yao Yao: Brothers (2012)

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The documentary “Brothers” takes us to the female-to-male transgender community in China, a community which endures hardships that are unfathomable to the majority of Chinese society. It documents the life of Tony, who forms part of a group of female-to-male transgendered people who call each other brothers. The film shows Tony’s road to self-acknowledgement, his troubles at work, his decision to undergo sex reassignment surgery and all the difficulties he encounters on his path.

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Fan Popo: Be a Woman (2011)

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Every night, the “Only Love” bar in Nanning puts on a glamorous transvestite show. This documentary follows the four drag queens over a span of three years to depict a touching and realistic perspective beyond flashy costumes, glamorous accessories, dazzling stage sets, and sensual dancing.

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