"If universities fail to recognize sexual and gender diversity, they perpetuate heteropatriarchal and LGBTIQA+phobic violence"

 

The 1st UOC Pride LGBTIQA+ Research Conference took place on 16 June, organized to give members of the university’s community an opportunity to share their experiences. Magda Vaz Dos Santos is one of the members of the conference organizing committee. She is a predoctoral researcher in the SOTRAC group at the UOC's Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences, as well as a film programmer, activist and doctoral student on the UOC's Society, Technology and Culture programme. In this interview, she talks about the importance of supporting research on LGBTIQA+ issues against a backdrop of rising far-right hate speech.

 

The 1st UOC Pride LGBTIQA+ Research Conference took place on 16 June, organized to give members of the university’s community an opportunity to share their experiences. Magda Vaz Dos Santos is one of the members of the conference organizing committee. She is a predoctoral researcher in the SOTRAC group at the UOC's Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences, as well as a film programmer, activist and doctoral student on the UOC's Society, Technology and Culture programme. In this interview, she talks about the importance of supporting research on LGBTIQA+ issues against a backdrop of rising far-right hate speech.

Research on the LGBTIQA+ community is important because it reveals experiences that fall outside heteronormativity and have been made invisible by it. For example, if we find the use of inclusive language to be jarring, it's because we have normalized binary, exclusionary language and take it for granted. I believe that the relationship between academia and the LGBTIQA+ community is complex and goes beyond conducting research on topics that may be of interest to the community. Academia remains a vertically organized space that occupies a place of power from which it generates knowledge on a pseudo-objective basis. It's also elitist, in that it's accessible only to people with sufficient material wealth and certain privileges. Bottom line, the universal assumption is still that academics are white, heterosexual males, and academia thus continues to speak from this position. So, apart from the fact that the experiences of the community are the subject of some studies, for me the questioning of academia itself is fundamental, generating not only other positions from which to do research but also other methodologies.

I think the conference has helped to highlight both the need for this research and the need to get to know each other, so we can start working together. It was mainly organized by a group of doctoral students with the help of the Doctoral School and the Equality Unit. But many people with other ties to the university also attended the event, such as administrative staff and staff from other departments or centres. So although the format was hybrid, it was very important to me that it took place in a physical space, given the nature of the UOC as a mostly online workplace. Bringing together so many LGBTIQA+ people and allies broke down the depersonalizing barriers of working from home. The need for this was made clear in a workshop where we were able to discuss common aspects of our daily lives, ask ourselves questions and identify the obstacles and discrimination we face at work, as well as making ourselves known to each other. There was also a round table featuring people who have been working for varying lengths of time in a range of roles within the institution. It highlighted the need to raise awareness of the journey this community has already undertaken, tracing the struggles and difficulties they may have faced at the university. Although this was our first conference, we have always been here. Understanding our history and making it visible helps us to understand where we are today.

Rather than setting priorities, within the organization we considered two approaches: Firstly, there's a need to raise the profile of LGBTIQA+ research. Secondly, members of the community need to be able to carry out research or be part of research groups that are not necessarily directly linked to the community. For example, we have found that queer methodologies are often not accepted in academia and there are few leading figures who are not cisgender, heterosexual and European men. Notably, most of the presentations given at the conference and the researchers who attended were from departments and research groups of a cultural or social nature, where the research carried out is often more qualitative. The LGBTIQA+ struggle continues to be absent in most research carried out in the so-called "hard sciences". I'm very interested in research on queer biology, such as the classic article "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles", which dismantles the scientific narrative and demonstrates how it continues to be a heteronormative construct.

We're currently seeing the spread of right-wing and far-right politics, with increased censorship of LGBTIQA+ culture and hate attacks targeting the community, as well as migrant and working-class communities. I want to believe that the university is a place where identities can be developed, where there is the risk of perpetuating oppression, but also the capacity to challenge and resist it.

The fact that this is the first conference dealing with this theme suggests that, even before now, combating LGBTIQA+phobia received little attention outside research. This is precisely one of the failings that became apparent in the conference workshop, where we found that many of the issues of the past still affect us today. However, we were able to hold this conference because many people are carrying out research in this area and, on this occasion, the university was where we were able to come together.

One thing we found is that the people who attended the conference were minimally aware and informed, but it didn't reach people who direct hate speech at the community in less formal contexts and chose not to attend. I think we need to start by recognizing the violence directed towards the community. This violence can materialize through online or face-to-face hate speech, disguised as free speech or casual jokes, and there are no mechanisms for addressing it directly.

Secondly, there are several aspects that affect the development of research in this area. For example, doctoral students' contracts are systemically precarious: most of us have three-year grants, although the rules say this can be extended for a fourth year. This situation, which affects everyone in the system, not just the LGBTIQA+ community, has an impact on our research and also causes mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression.

Other issues raised include the need for inclusive toilets that avoid binary stereotypes, as well as departments or research groups dedicated to LGBTIQA+ research.

My field of research is that of cultural products and their potential to both perpetuate and challenge hegemony. I'm currently researching how consent is represented in queer cinema. Most of the work that has been done around sexual consent, from the #MeToo movement to the new "Only Yes Means Yes" law, is based on a heterosexual dynamic, but there is little information and few authorities on consent in non-conventional relationships.

Apart from examining whether heterosexual patterns are replicated within the LGBTIQA+ community, my research analyses how consent is represented in the films we make, what mechanisms we use, and what queer epistemologies and experiences they may be linked to. This goes far beyond determining whether or not consent takes place in the selected films. Rather, the research examines what audiovisual language is linked to consent and how it is constructed in non-ideal contexts, such as where there is an imbalance of power.

You can also see from my research that I am very interested in studies on desire and sexuality, such as Laura Milano's latest book El dedo en el porno, as well as research into mutual support theories, paying careful attention to methodology and avoiding extractivist academic practices.

The lack of visibility of the LGBTIQA+ community, and others, is a phenomenon that does not happen by itself. One social group makes the others invisible and makes that seem normal. People make others invisible to defend their own interests, to maintain their position of privilege and prevent change. Censorship is a tool of invisibility and is used precisely to try to maintain a hegemonic order. Although research in this field has started to emerge recently, at the conference we learned about many studies that were turned down and about the problems experienced by longer-term employees at the university.

In this sense, making us invisible is a form of violence because it's about making a person or a community disappear. If we're not visible, we don't participate in society, we don't know each other, and so the political power of collective action is lost and we perpetuate the stigmas and the lack of role models.

Universities are not neutral spaces, but part of the structures of power, and they are where many individual and collective identities are formed. They are not accessible to everyone, either, and there is segregation by class, race and origin. LGBTIQA+ people suffer violence in the education system and family environment, which can affect their access to higher education. Research in this field has been suppressed because it did not suit specific interests. This bias ultimately affects society as a whole, and our community in particular, because we don't have the material resources to make ourselves visible. If universities fail to recognize sexual and gender diversity, they perpetuate heteropatriarchal and LGBTIQA+phobic violence.