Queering Criminologies Introduction

Queering Criminologies Introduction Angela Dwyer, Matthew Ball, and Thomas Crofts In recent times, there has been a move towards an academic articulation of the nexus between queer and criminology. This move is significant because previously criminology and queer theories/methodologies have been somewhat awkward and perhaps dangerous bedfellows (Ball, forthcoming). This is not to say that criminological research has not engaged with issues around sexuality, gender, and sex diversity. On the contrary, people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ), and with many other fluid categories of sexuality, gender, and sex diversity, have been the subject of many research studies, but these studies have been informed by a ‘deficit’ model in the past (Groombridge 1999: 540). Early criminological work was steeped in the notion that people who displayed characteristics of homosexuality, for instance, were considered a ‘defective sexual species’ (Tomsen 1997: 33) and were studied by criminologists and other social scientists in terms of how they might be cured and controlled. Legislative structures drew from these ideas and resultantly criminalised behaviours that queered heterosexuality, and in particular sexual contact between men (LeVay, 1996; Gunther, 2009; Nussbaum, 2010; Rydstrom & Mustola, 2007). Appearance and clothing that queered gender roles was too regulated by legislation in various times and places, with women in United States, for instance, always needing to ensure they wore three items of feminine clothing in order to avoid prosecution for impersonating a man (Faderman 1991). Police were the central mechanism through which these legislative controls were administered leading to discriminatory and violent interactions between police and LGBTIQ people (Dwyer 2014). While this focus has thankfully shifted in more recent times, mainstream criminologies could be still characterised as heteronormative. Issues related with sexuality, gender and sex diversity can be marginalised in research projects. For instance, people who identify as LGBTIQ are often incorporated into larger criminological projects, but in relation to broader criminological concerns, with issues related to their LGBTIQ status glossed over or ignored. This can particularly be the case for transgender people, with research projects choosing not to report on transgender people’s experiences because there were too few participants to be considered a worthy sample. Researchers that straddle the divide of criminology and queer can also be oddly situated in broader academic, disciplinary processes. For instance, researchers in this area have often found themselves scattered randomly across different, and at times strangely matched, panel sessions at major international criminology conferences (Petersen and Panfil 2014). Even so, this does not mean criminological research is not queer – as Tomsen (1997: 35-36) notes, ‘the simultaneous moral repulsion and sexual fascination with its subject matter, and the homoerotic qualities of so much crime research…are the reasons why criminology must be described as a very queer discipline’. So what does it mean to queer the discipline of criminology, or indeed produce queer criminological research? Criminology broadly might be defined as ranging ‘from the “common-sense”, moralistic, conservative through the legal/classical to sub-cultural and even oppositional readings as set out in many introductory texts and in the research and articles published about crime and criminal justice’ (Groombridge 1999: 532-533). We draw this together with understandings of queer not just as a noun taken up by a lot of young people in a contemporary context to describe their sexuality and/or gender identity, but also as a verb: we showcase research that blurs the heteronormative nature of criminology so that criminological research might ‘defy the strictures of the dominant sex/gender/sexual identity system’ (Ault, 1996: 322). In holding together in tension these sometimes incompatible concepts, this collection highlights research from a range of fields outside of criminology, as well as different approaches within criminology (such as theoretical, empirical, deconstructive, and positivist approaches) that span the intersection between queer scholarship/communities and criminologies. We recognise that doing what Ball, Buist and Wood (2014: 2) call ‘queer criminology’ means working through and within ‘a diverse array of criminology-related researches, critiques, methodologies, perspectives, and reflections’ (Ball, Buist & Wood 2014: 2). Furthermore, it means working at the margins of criminology, whilst also being ‘united by a critical attitude of some kind’ (Ball 2014: 21). Research and theorising around the queer-criminology nexus is therefore growing rapidly. Albeit relatively few researchers engaged in this scholarship worldwide, queer criminological work is at the forefront of critical academic criminology, encompassing a variety of academic projects ranging from the theoretical to the practical. We have seen the emergence of an international Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice dedicated to queering criminology (Petersen and Panfil 2014), in addition to a special issue on Queer/ing Criminology in a major international criminological journal, Critical Criminology (Ball, Buist and Woods 2014). There are also specific projects dedicated to violence against, and policing of, LGBTIQ people (Berman and Robinson 2010, Ristock et al. 2011). In addition, dedicated research documents the experiences of LGBTIQ people inside criminal justice systems (Duggan 2012, Mogul et al. 2011, Smith and Stanley 2011), as well as LGBTIQ people who work in these criminal justice systems (Colvin 2012). All these projects seek to directly address the heteronormativity of mainstream criminology by responding to the needs of LGBT communities in providing a space within which queer perspectives can be drawn into criminology. These forms of research also disrupt heteronormative mainstream criminologies by providing a critical space within which criminology itself, and the treatment of queer communities within the criminal justice system, might be critiqued. They offer up new ways of thinking and speaking about LGBTIQ experiences within criminological frameworks and they bend and stretch these frameworks to make queer criminologies thinkable. Inspired by the earlier work of Mason and Tomsen (1997) and their conference on violence against gay and lesbian people, we sought to bring together scholars from around Australia in a symposium hosted at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The results are this collection of research focusing on internationally-relevant issues that have implications beyond the Australian context. It brings together significant contributions to the fields of queer criminology and criminal law, exploring a range of historical and contemporary themes common to these disciplines. It might seem strange then to anyone outside the fields of criminology and criminal law that these two obviously closely related disciplines actually rarely meet. After all, criminal law is to a large degree the subject matter of criminology and shapes the contours of the discipline. By prohibiting behaviour with the threat of punishment for non-compliance criminal law is a tool of social control, and as Ashworth and Horder comments, it is the censuring function of criminal law ‘which marks out its special social significance’ and which also ‘requires a clear social justification’ (2013, p.1). Equally, criminology can offer insights into criminal law, providing frameworks for understanding crime. Despite this as Lacey and Zedner note: ‘It is almost as rare to find a criminology text which concerns itself with the scope and nature of criminal law as it is to find a criminology text which addresses criminological questions about crime’ (2012, p. 159). This book aims to redress this bringing both disciplines together but also queering them. It draws together a fascinating collection of papers dealing with wide ranging inter-related issues in criminology and criminal law. Many of the chapters queers criminology by bringing a queer perspective to criminology and criminal law and exploring criminalisation in relation to LGBTQI issues. This brings the disciplines of criminology and criminal law together in seeking to understand the social and legal constructions of crime (Lacey and Zender 2012, p. 159). As Lacey, Quick and Wells point out, criminalisation is an elastic object of study because a range of factors (such as historical, political, economic, psychiatric, moral, educational, familial, normative, labelling) influence and are interwoven the way in which criminal law plays out on the ground (2010). Studies of criminalisation therefore seek to identify the basis upon which decisions are made to regulate behaviour through criminal law and in this book seek to do this through a queer lens. Other chapters queer criminology and criminal law by questioning from a queer perspective the traditional frameworks for understanding criminology and criminal law. The contributions to this collection are offered by some of Australia’s leading experts in queer criminology and criminal law. As such, the collection provides a snapshot of key issues and showcase up-to-date critical scholarly analysis of these issues. Overview of the Volume The first section of this volume, 'Queer Criminology: Past, Present, and Future', offers largely theoretical and conceptual contributions to the development of the amorphous field of queer criminological scholarship. The chapters within this section all suggest directions for this field, reflecting on the relationship between queer criminology and mainstream criminology, the assumptions about progress that are often made within such work, and the kinds of critical scholarship that queer criminological work might entail. In the opening chapter, Derek Dalton offers a personal reflection on the current state of this field and its possible future, taking stock of where we are and where we might go. Exhibiting what might be described as a cautious ambivalence towards both criminology and queer theory, Dalton suggests that while sitting on the criminological margins is productive for queer work, if it is to have any significant impact and not simply be dismissed, it is essential for queer criminology to engage with the ‘mainstream’. Working through this tension of simultaneously wanting to be an outsider and an insider, he suggests that it is up to queer criminologists to ‘charm’ rather than ‘smash’ our way into criminology, offering criminology our own ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’-style ‘make-better’. Perhaps, as he alludes to, we may never be fully part of the mainstream, but it is important that queer criminologists work out exactly what kind of relationship we have to it. Some queer criminological scholarship, as well as reforms in the criminal justice system that seek to address injustices experienced by LGBTI people, are often underpinned by the assumption that expanding queer perspectives in criminology, and responding to the unique experiences of LGBTI people in criminal justice reforms, are progressive moves. They hold that, however incrementally, these developments edge us ever closer to the achievement of greater criminal and social justice for LGBTI people. Angela Dwyer and Stephen Tomsen’s chapter challenges this assumption by considering a unique problem that arises when we try to, for example, improve relationships between LGBTI communities and police. Given that such reforms occur against a backdrop of histories of police violence toward these communities, Dwyer and Tomsen suggest that traces of these histories always remain and have the potential to re-emerge, destroying much of the work that goes into improving those relationships. Dwyer and Tomsen illustrate these dynamics by discussing the violent arrest of a community member at the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the community response to this, ultimately suggesting that, given the discursive circulation of these histories, interactions between the community and the police are effectively ungovernable. Such a perspective is instructive for queer criminologists, as it requires us to rethink the investments that we make in what we characterise as progressive reforms. The final chapter in this opening section expands these problematisations of queer investments in criminal justice institutions and explores which styles of critical scholarship may be most productive for queer criminology. By considering the ‘Prison of Love’ party, held during the San Francisco Pride celebrations of 2014, as well as the protests that claimed the party inappropriately celebrated institutions unjust institutions that victimise LGBTI people, Matthew Ball utilises the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to identify the ‘paranoid’ and ‘reparative’ reading practices that appeared throughout these debates. Paranoid readings, he suggests, underpin many of the arguments that the criminal justice system is inherently injurious, and hold that the exposure of such injustice will lead to a fundamental dismantling of such institutions. Reparative readings, on the other hand, underpin the position of those who maintain that there is some value in connecting to injurious objects such as the justice system, and that a repair of those injuries is possible. Ball suggests that while both approaches have limitations, there is a lot to be gained from resisting the pull of paranoid readings in queer criminological scholarship, and fostering greater opportunities for reparative readings. This may in fact be in line with many of the broader goals of queer criminological scholarship, and a useful approach to follow in such scholarship in the future. The second section of this volume, ‘Uncomfortable Subjects in Queer Criminology’, examines precisely those issues and individuals which, to this point, have been largely overlooked in the development of this field. These oversights may be for a number of reasons, whether due to the fact that research has not yet turned in the direction of these subjects, or because they are in themselves uncomfortable subjects to discuss. In many respects, then, the chapters in this section expand on those in the first, particularly by focusing on the boundaries of queer criminological work, and by forcing queer criminologists to confront exactly who or what might constitute the proper objects of their work. This section opens with Senthorun Raj’s chapter examining disgust. Analysing a range of criminal law cases from across the UK, the USA, and Australia that deal in some way with queer sex, Raj points to the different methods through which disgust and queerness are connected in these cases. Through this analysis he suggests that disgust has been used both to criminalise and to decriminalise queer sex acts. That is, its mobilisation has produced at times a way of sanitising queer intimacy, and at others, a way of recoiling from unconventional intimacy. Thus, while embracing disgust might seem to be a useful and legitimate queer strategy, such a mobilisation of disgust in queer criminological politics is potentially dangerous given that it may produce new ways of regulating queer sex. In some respects, Dave McDonald’s chapter extends on Raj’s discussions on disgust, confronting one of the most uncomfortable (and disgust-provoking) subjects in queer criminology: the category of the ‘paedophile’. In his provocative contribution, McDonald asks us to unpack the construction of this category and consider the place of the ‘paedophile’ as an object and subject of queer criminological investigation. Given the interest of queer scholars in non-normativity, the construction of gender and sexuality, and in disrupting conventional thought, it is almost inevitable that queer criminological attention ought to be drawn in this direction. However, there is considerable controversy around opening up the term ‘queer’ and expanding its applicability in this way. Explorations of these issues sit uncomfortably beside queer criminological work that seeks to achieve inclusion for LGBTI people, or work that seeks to ensure the respectability of queer scholarship within the criminological mainstream. By forcing us to confront some of these questions, McDonald’s chapter not only pushes some of the boundaries of queer criminological scholarship, but also works to ensure that such work remains unsettling. Wendy O’Brien’s chapter shifts the focus substantially in order to consider a topic central to queer criminological scholarship that has received less attention than many others: the legal regulatory frameworks through which sexuality and gender are policed in Australia. These have been under-explored particularly in the context of intersex people, and O’Brien addresses this oversight. In this chapter, O’Brien identifies the ways in which lives outside of gender binaries are made liveable or unliveable. Through discussing landmark Australian legal cases such as the Toonen and Norrie decisions, O’Brien discusses the legal and criminal regulations that provide the background of (non)liveability against which some queer lives are lived and through which legal justice is produced. In doing so, O’Brien also draws out their broader relevance by pointing to the human rights and international law principles that thread through these cases, and the ways in which Australia is in many respects leading the way in this legal realm. The remaining sections of this volume move away in many respects from the theoretical and conceptual, and largely add to the growing bodies of criminological and legal research that not only constitute a significant portion of queer criminological research, but are also central to instituting social and legal change. The third section of this volume, ‘Queer Experiences of Crime and Justice’ includes chapters on hate crimes, personal safety from violence, and the potential criminalisation of queer protest, painting a multifaceted picture of crime and justice issues as lived by LGBTI communities. Building on similar themes explored in earlier chapters by Dwyer and Tomsen as well as by Ball, Thomas Crofts and Tyrone Kirchengast consider some further paradoxical dynamics relating to the policing of queer communities. Discussing the appearance, after the removal of a rainbow pedestrian crossing in the heart of Sydney’s most populous gay and lesbian district, of chalk-drawn crossings all over the world in support of marriage equality, Crofts and Kirchengast ask why those drawing such crossings were not prosecuted, despite there being a myriad of applicable laws and case authorities that might be utilised to do so. Putting this down to the mainstream acceptability of the campaign for marriage equality, and the greater acknowledgement by police of the necessity for restraint in light of the violence towards revellers at the 2013 Mardi Gras, Crofts and Kirchengast suggest that historical memory (both recent and distant) plays into the decisions made by police relating to prosecutions, arrests, and general police matters. This is important, because not only does it put paid to views that suggest the police are an institution that is inherently injurious to queers, but it also suggests at least one context in which police have not been used to suppress queer activism. Nicole Asquith and Christopher Fox’s chapter considers an issue of ongoing importance within queer criminological scholarship – hate crimes. They offer a reconceptualisation of hate crimes, suggesting that expanding our understanding of honour-based violence, and bringing that concept into our explorations of anti-queer violence, may be instructive. Indeed, Asquith and Fox’s chapter does not just contribute to our discussions of hate crimes, but it also illustrates the way in which paying serious attention to the experiences of queer communities in these contexts can produce a reformulation of criminological objects such as hate crimes, offering insights that can be of benefit beyond queer communities. Building on some of Asquith and Fox’s insights on violence and the creation of safe spaces, Bianca Fileborn’s chapter focuses on the strategies used by young LGBTIQ people in order to create and maintain their personal safety from violence in the night time economy. Pointing out that the creation of queer safeties, as she terms it, is fluid and shifts depending on the context, Fileborn’s chapter highlights the considerable difficulty that faces any attempt that might be made to protect young LGBTIQ people from violence, given that individuals see it as necessary to take responsibility for this themselves. The chapters in the final section of this volume, ‘Queering Relationships: Coercion and Consent’, expand on these queer experiences of crime and justice, but focus in more depth on issues of violence and coercion in a range of queer interpersonal contexts, such as intimate relationships, sexual relations, and prison communities. As long as violence remains a key aspect of the criminal justice experiences of queer communities, and as long as criminology, criminal law, and the criminal justice system continue to utilise largely heteronormative understandings of coercion, consent, and violence, research of these kinds must form a key component of queer criminological scholarship. Paul Simpson, Joanne Reekie, Tony Butler, Juliet Richters, Lorraine Yap, and Basil Donovan's chapter explores sexual coercion in men's prisons. While, of course, not all sex among men in prisons is because those men identify as part of the queer community, sexual coercion among men in prison is still a topic ripe for queer analysis. This is particularly so given that Simpson et al.’s quantitative analysis of sexual coercion in Australian prisons highlights that those most at risk of such coercion were those who identified as non-heterosexual, and those who had a history of sexual coercion outside of the prison. As the authors point out, an important and ongoing concern is the protection of those most at risk – a concern that resonates with similar analyses of the experiences of queer people in prison. The final chapter of this book focuses on a key area of growth in queer criminological scholarship – intimate partner violence among sex and gender diverse people. Drawing from one of the first major qualitative studies in this area, Natasha Papazian draws together the voices of both victims and perpetrators to paint a picture of the barriers that sex and gender diverse people encounter when seeking help and accessing support in violent relationships. This research brings to light some of the similarities and the important differences between sex and gender diverse victims and cisgendered victims when help-seeking and accessing support. Closing thoughts This volume of work is not intended to be comprehensive. As Peterson and Panfil (2014) note, it is almost impossible for any one text to be comprehensive of the incredibly complex skein of research approaches, methodologies, issues, concepts, and ideas that work through queer and criminologies. Similarly, this work does not intend to be new in the work that it comprises. This work has been happening across queer and criminologies for many decades. References Ashworth, A and Horder J, Principles of Criminal Law, 7th ed (OUP: 2013) Ault A (1996) The dilemma of identity: Bi women’s negotiations. In: Seidman S (ed.) Queer Theory/Sociology. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 311-329. Ball, M (2014) Queer criminology, critique, and the ‘art of not being governed’. Critical Criminology, 22: 21-34. Colvin, R. A. (2012). Gay and lesbian cops: Diversity and effective policing. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Dwyer, A. (2014). Pleasures, perversities, and partnerships: the historical emergence of LGBT-police relationships. 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