- The Gender Studies Program, 604 Katz building, Bar Ilan University
Ramat Gan 5290002
Israel - 972-54-9599400
Gilly Hartal
Bar-Ilan University, The Gender Studies Program, Department Member
- McGill University, Geography, Post-Docadd
- Gender, Social Movements, Queer Theory, Affect (Cultural Theory), Social Geography, Social Movements (Political Science), and 25 moreSociology of Emotion, Feminism(s), Shame Theory, Queer Geography, Gender and Sexuality, Geographies of sexuality, Social Activism, Queer spaces, Feminist Geography, Sexuality, LGBT Studies, Political Geography, Queer Studies, Human Geography, Tourism Studies, Nationalism and Decolonization, Globalization And Postcolonial Studies, Scott Morgensen, Mimi Schippers, Sociology, Political Science, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Geography, and Political Philosophyedit
- As a human geographer, I address the various ways power relations shape and transform in space. Specifically, I study... moreAs a human geographer, I address the various ways power relations shape and transform in space. Specifically, I study the geography of sexuality and focus on LGBT spaces, and the way geographic space acts upon the politics of sexuality – the changing power relations within and between LGBT groups. The issues involve relations of inclusion (belonging and safety) and exclusion (alienation and power politics). As a feminist qualitative researcher, my method is ethnographic – informed by the rich knowledge grounded in the field: personally engaging interviews, participant observations and content analysis of documents.
My doctoral dissertation examined the discourse on the construction of belonging and the (re)production of power relations in LGBT activist spaces, based on a field study of four such spaces in the center and periphery of Israel.
My post-doctoral project deals with gay tourism to Tel Aviv. The study discusses the allocation of municipal and national resources, examines the LGBT discourse and the interests that produce the political economy of gay tourism, and presents its implications for urban space.edit
Homonormativity refers to the ratification and endorsement of heteronormative institutions and structures into lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) lives, culture and discourse. While homonormativity is commonly manifested in... more
Homonormativity refers to the ratification and endorsement of heteronormative institutions and structures into lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) lives, culture and discourse. While homonormativity is commonly manifested in (relatively) privileged, White, able-bodied gay men, this paper focuses on lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LBT) women’s experiences in Israeli peripheral and rural spaces. As a concept, homonormativity has the potential of reducing lived experiences into a widely criticized category. Instead, we voice the geographical, temporal and gendered potential of homonormative processes to articulate varied ways for leading a queer life under capitalism. Based on 61 qualitative interviews with LBT women living in the Israeli peripheries, we argue that LBT women employ two major homonormative processes of becoming political subjects to negotiate their sexualities in a space fraught with LGBTphobia. These homonormative processes are comprised of assimilation and contestation, revealing a nuanced mode of political subjectivity, shaped by ongoing experiences of LGBTphobia.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The decriminalization of sodomy in Israel in 1988 transformed the political opportunity structure and heralded the local gay legal revolution that manifested in legal amendments, social movements, and the emergence of a flourishing,... more
The decriminalization of sodomy in Israel in 1988 transformed the political opportunity structure and heralded the local gay legal revolution that manifested in legal amendments, social movements, and the emergence of a flourishing, normative LGBT culture. Most activities were based in Tel Aviv with additional, scattered movements in other major Israeli cities. Since 1988, ongoing legal and political work have been taking place, with emphasis on a politics of assimilation. The Israeli LGBT social movements fit into a general trend of NGO-ization, by which organizations provide social services and endorse a national identity as a part of neoliberal governmentality. Palestinian movements and pro-BDS activists, however, do not participate in this co-option and assimilation process, resulting in deep segmentation of LGBT politics. Through this process, some LGBT social movements participate in and benefit from institutionalized encouragement and approval, while others protest state agenda and politics and work independently, exposing the central role homonationalism plays for Israeli LGBT movements and interest groups. Israeli homonationalism was induced through a continuous process of mainstreaming that was intensified by violent incidents that had major consequences for LGBT social movements in Israel. This violence broadened the scope of social movements’ activism and influenced public opinion on LGBT issues as well as politicians’ public support of LGBTs. As a result of these incidents, relationships between state authorities, municipalities, community activism, and LGBT social movements in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have changed dramatically. LGBT social movements in Tel Aviv used the municipal administration and urban space to transform the cultural and symbolic value of LGBT subjectivity, culture, and discourse, securing their dominance within the local arena. This local power, as revealed in the case of gay tourism to Tel Aviv, reshaped the capacity to negotiate with the government, creating an additional lobby for LGBT resources. Two currents dominating LGBT discourses have considerably influenced Israeli LGBT social movements’ goals, agendas, practices, achievements, and networks: NGO-ization and homonationalism. Specifically, their interlacing with Israeli neoliberalism influenced LGBT movements’ power to motivate change. The analysis of Israeli LGBT social movements traces major milestones, from the early stages in the 1980s to the 21st-century period of homonationalism, but it also challenges homonationalism as an invariable situation. Rather, new challenges galvanize new politics and power structures for LGBT social movements and for their endorsement by municipalities and the national government. The neoliberal perspective reveals that LGBT social movements keep on working, growing, and becoming more institutionalized and normalized. This, however, does not reflect greater power by LGBT social movements but rather the privatization of the state, enabling LGBT social movements to step into niches once under the government’s exclusive responsibility. Therefore, in the 21st century, the value and valuation of LGBT subjects is established not so much by social movements’ work but via economic and urban power, reflecting a “post-homonationalist” mode.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Social Movements, Human Geography, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and 15 moreIsrael Studies, Politics, Spatial Politics, Loss and Trauma, Geographies of sexuality, Applied Economics, LGBTq Activisms, LGBT Studies, Queer, Queer Activism, Tel Aviv, Sexual Politics, Queer Politics, Queer Movement, and Feminist and Queer Social Movements
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Research Interests: Sociology, Cultural Studies, Human Geography, Aesthetics, Geopolitics, and 14 moreHeritage Tourism, Embodied Cognition, Political Science, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Reflexivity, Geographies of sexuality, Pride, Homosexuality, Social and cultural geography, Tourism, Human Sexuality, Queer Geography, Gay tourism, and Pinkwashing Israel and Homonationalism
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Research Interests: Sociology, Social Movements, Queer Studies, Queer Theory, Politics, and 14 moreThe Body, Urban Studies, Geographies of sexuality, Trauma, Activism, Jerusalem, Homonationalism, Queer, Queer Geography, Tel Aviv, Urban movements, Pinkwashing Israel and Homonationalism, Israel Palestine, and Tel Aviv Jaffa
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Research Interests:
LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and other sexual and gender expressions) politics in Israel are contradictory; at times progressive, and at other times reflecting a reserved liberal policy of delimiting LGBT+ sexualities to the... more
LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and other sexual and gender expressions) politics in Israel are contradictory; at times progressive, and at other times reflecting a reserved liberal policy of delimiting LGBT+ sexualities to the private sphere. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there have been tremendous gains for LGBT+ people in Israel. These gains were produced and bolstered by neoliberal politics that manifested in a homonational discourse. Homonationalism refers to a politics of normalization through neoliberal notions of consumerism and domestication combined with national assimilation. Although Israeli neoliberal politics have translated into uneven gains for the trans community and others, the trans community continues to experience material disadvantages, violence, and discrimination, and hard-won activist gains are perpetually under threat by the anti-trans coalition. The chapter focuses on activist processes and on two institutional settings – the healthcare and education systems – to further explore privatization processes and individualist perspective on LGBT+ people. This framework is informed by the local understanding of post-homonationalism, reflecting a privatized urban belonging and normativity based on the value LGBT+ people produce for urban spaces rather than on promoting pro-LGBT+ legislation. This, once again, reflects a reserved liberal policy that addresses the specific needs of LGBT+ people while rendering them so specific as not to undermine the policy’s nationalist and homonormative import.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Political Science, Politics, LGBT Issues, Homophobia, and 6 moreIsrael, Activism, Homonationalism, Queer, Lesbian, and Lgbtq
How do lesbian and bisexual, cisgender and transgender (LBT) women talk about sex? This paper looks at constructions of sexual discourse and the production of sexual subjectivity from the perspective of LBT women in the Israeli periphery,... more
How do lesbian and bisexual, cisgender and transgender (LBT) women talk about sex? This paper looks at constructions of sexual discourse and the production of sexual subjectivity from the perspective of LBT women in the Israeli periphery, asking how they construct their lives as sexual subjects. Applying Sara Ahmed's 'orientations' concept, we argue that the periphery serves as an LGBTphobic context that impacts sexual discourses and constructs LBT sexual subjectivities. We conceptualize LBT women's sexual subjectivity as distinct and anchored in spatiality, and frame it as oriented sexual subjectivity. This particular subjectivity reveals an intertwined movement between silence and discourse, urban and rural, oriented to the space inhabited by LBT women. Oriented sexual subjectivity is constructed particularly through an alignment of LBT women's discourse on sex and sexual practices with the heteronormative spaces in which they live. Based on 61 interviews with LBT women in the Israeli periphery, we show how sex is discussed only in relation to violent experiences or while talking about urban experiences in Tel Aviv. This discursive framework reveals how in the periphery, like a palimpsest, sex is cartographically hidden in deep layers of meaning rather than discussed in the open, and how LBT sexual subjectivity is oriented.
Research Interests: Sociology, Rural Sociology, Human Geography, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and 12 moreIsrael Studies, Gender and Sexuality, LGBT Issues, Rural Geography, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Geographies of sexuality, Transgender, Subjectivity, LGBT Studies, Lesbian, Kibutz, and Public Administration and Policy
Despite growing visibility of the trans population in Israel, there has been limited research on trans healthcare in a local context, particularly in the field of primary care medicine. Primary care encompasses services provided in... more
Despite growing visibility of the trans population in Israel, there has been limited research on trans healthcare in a local context, particularly in the field of primary care medicine. Primary care encompasses services provided in locally distributed clinics and has a crucial role in providing both preventive and specialized healthcare. The aim of this study is to outline barriers to trans-inclusive primary care and measures employed by the trans community to overcome them. Biopower and counter-conduct are used as analytical frameworks to examine the transexclusionary features of the Israeli healthcare system and steps taken to resist it. To examine these issues, 19 medical care professionals and 20 trans people and activists were interviewed, and a variety of relevant texts were analyzed. Our results indicate trans-exclusionary features in primary healthcare, such as ambiguity regarding trans-inclusive services offered, sex-specific treatments, and lack of medical training programs dedicated to the trans population. To overcome these difficulties, the Israeli trans community has accumulated communal experiential knowledge and transferred it to physicians and policymakers in a localized and informal manner. We argue that by using informal practices, the trans community can provide support and information to its own members as well as operate alongside power systems, albeit in a slow and lengthy manner. More generally, the findings of this study highlight how patient activism is employed by marginalized populations, who face not only health disparities, but institutional discrimination as well.
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בעשור האחרון אנו עדים להתפשטותם של מצעדי גאווה בעולם, מערי המטרופולין הגדולות לעבר ערים קטנות, ואפילו לאזורים כפריים. תהליך זה כרוך בהתעצבות קבוצות אקטיביסטיות ושיחים פוליטיים מסוג חדש, הבוחנים מהם המקומות הנכונים וההולמים שבהם יש לקיים... more
בעשור האחרון אנו עדים להתפשטותם של מצעדי גאווה בעולם, מערי המטרופולין
הגדולות לעבר ערים קטנות, ואפילו לאזורים כפריים. תהליך זה כרוך בהתעצבות קבוצות
אקטיביסטיות ושיחים פוליטיים מסוג חדש, הבוחנים מהם המקומות הנכונים וההולמים
שבהם יש לקיים מצעדי גאווה. מאמר זה מתמקד באירועי הגאווה בעיר אשדוד, העיר
השישית בגודלה בארץ, ובוחן ממדים של זמן ומרחב קוויריים המעוגנים בצורות
אפקטיביות. ההתמקדות בניתוח המרחבי של מצעד הגאווה חושפת שהאקטיביסטים
שואפים לכונן מרחב ללהט"ב בעיר דרך קיום מצעד מרכזי ובעל נוכחות, בעוד המרחב
המוקצה למצעד בעיר הישראלית מנותק למעשה מהחיים העירוניים מבחינה מרחבית
וטמפורלית. התוצאה היא שהמצעד הוא מעין בועה המתקיימת למשך שעות ספורות,
והשפעתו על העיר ועל תושביה מועטה. לבסוף, המשתתפים הצעירים במצעד מסמנים
היבט נוסף של טמפורליות, ולפיו המצעד נערך עבור צעירים, המסמלים בנוכחותם אפשרות להמשך של חיים קוויריים בוגרים באשדוד ולהתגבשותם. לפיכך, טענתנו
המרכזית היא שמצעדים בערים ישראליות יוצקים לתוכם ממדים טמפורליים שבמסגרתם
ההווה מדומיין כבועת זמן, המנותקת הן מהעבר והן מהעתיד, ואשר נשענת על עתיד
מדומיין. מבחינה מרחבית, המאמר מראה שהלוגיקה המנחה את המצעד בעיר הגלובלית
מועתקת למרחב העיר הישראלית כמעט ללא התאמות. דבר זה מחדד את השאלה אם
העיר הישראלית יכולה להצמיח עתיד ללהט"ב שאינו תלוי בתרבות של העיר הגדולה.
הגדולות לעבר ערים קטנות, ואפילו לאזורים כפריים. תהליך זה כרוך בהתעצבות קבוצות
אקטיביסטיות ושיחים פוליטיים מסוג חדש, הבוחנים מהם המקומות הנכונים וההולמים
שבהם יש לקיים מצעדי גאווה. מאמר זה מתמקד באירועי הגאווה בעיר אשדוד, העיר
השישית בגודלה בארץ, ובוחן ממדים של זמן ומרחב קוויריים המעוגנים בצורות
אפקטיביות. ההתמקדות בניתוח המרחבי של מצעד הגאווה חושפת שהאקטיביסטים
שואפים לכונן מרחב ללהט"ב בעיר דרך קיום מצעד מרכזי ובעל נוכחות, בעוד המרחב
המוקצה למצעד בעיר הישראלית מנותק למעשה מהחיים העירוניים מבחינה מרחבית
וטמפורלית. התוצאה היא שהמצעד הוא מעין בועה המתקיימת למשך שעות ספורות,
והשפעתו על העיר ועל תושביה מועטה. לבסוף, המשתתפים הצעירים במצעד מסמנים
היבט נוסף של טמפורליות, ולפיו המצעד נערך עבור צעירים, המסמלים בנוכחותם אפשרות להמשך של חיים קוויריים בוגרים באשדוד ולהתגבשותם. לפיכך, טענתנו
המרכזית היא שמצעדים בערים ישראליות יוצקים לתוכם ממדים טמפורליים שבמסגרתם
ההווה מדומיין כבועת זמן, המנותקת הן מהעבר והן מהעתיד, ואשר נשענת על עתיד
מדומיין. מבחינה מרחבית, המאמר מראה שהלוגיקה המנחה את המצעד בעיר הגלובלית
מועתקת למרחב העיר הישראלית כמעט ללא התאמות. דבר זה מחדד את השאלה אם
העיר הישראלית יכולה להצמיח עתיד ללהט"ב שאינו תלוי בתרבות של העיר הגדולה.
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How do lesbian and bisexual, cisgender and transgender (LBT) women talk about sex? This paper looks at constructions of sexual discourse and the production of sexual subjectivity from the perspective of LBT women in the Israeli periphery,... more
How do lesbian and bisexual, cisgender and transgender (LBT) women talk about sex? This paper looks at constructions of sexual discourse and the production of sexual subjectivity from the perspective of LBT women in the Israeli periphery, asking how they construct their lives as sexual subjects. Applying Sara Ahmed's 'orientations' concept, we argue that the periphery serves as an LGBTphobic context that impacts sexual discourses and constructs LBT sexual subjectivities. We conceptualize LBT women's sexual subjectivity as distinct and anchored in spatiality, and frame it as oriented sexual subjectivity. This particular subjectivity reveals an intertwined movement between silence and discourse, urban and rural, oriented to the space inhabited by LBT women. Oriented sexual subjectivity is constructed particularly through an alignment of LBT women's discourse on sex and sexual practices with the heteronormative spaces in which they live. Based on 61 interviews with LBT women in the Israeli periphery, we show how sex is discussed only in relation to violent experiences or while talking about urban experiences in Tel Aviv. This discursive framework reveals how in the periphery, like a palimpsest, sex is cartographically hidden in deep layers of meaning rather than discussed in the open, and how LBT sexual subjectivity is oriented.
Research Interests:
Historically, organizations and individuals have (un)consciously produced safe spaces out of various backgrounds and in myriad ways. Specifically, queer safe spaces represent a significant construct within queer discourses and practices... more
Historically, organizations and individuals have (un)consciously produced safe spaces out of various backgrounds and in myriad ways. Specifically, queer safe spaces represent a significant construct within queer discourses and practices that articulate the need for physical, psychological, rhetoric, virtual, and imagined safety. In this context, safety means being protected from heteronormative and patriarchal violence that shapes the everyday lives and subjectivities of queer and LGBT+ individuals in public and private spaces. Whether these are offline, online, physical, or educational settings, queer safe spaces are defined as relational and deliberative spaces in which unsafety cannot be completely undone. Queer safe spaces then provide refuge for activism, social and personal transformation, facilitation thereof for productive spaces of dialogue, and identity construction. Even though the term “queer safe space” is commonly used, it remains undertheorized and no comprehensive un...
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In 2019, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was hosted in Tel Aviv. Like other national contests such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, the ESC is a political event. For gay Israeli men who are ESC fans, this was an opportunity to... more
In 2019, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was hosted in Tel Aviv. Like other national contests such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, the ESC is a political event. For gay Israeli men who are ESC fans, this was an opportunity to become more integrated in the gay and national communities through homonormativity and homonational processes. However, as this case study shows, Israeli gay men ESC fans mostly rejected homonational masculinity in favor of a counterhegemonic identification, self-characterized as "ESC geeks." In that, they adhered to their marginal space and adopted a subversive queer perspective. Analytically, this means that homonationalism should not be considered a political form of normalizing power that is accessible to all gay men. Rather, it is a process that produces manifold, including queer practices, and it can no longer be seen as accessible to all LGBTs, or as something into which LGBTs are duped.
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Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were... more
Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were perceived as "empty", as spaces that have limited or no LGBT visibility and presence. This article focuses on LGBT activists' experiences in LGBT activist spaces in the peripheries. I argue that rather than reproducing the center-periphery power structure, LGBT activists are subverting the paradigm, while creating practices and imaginaries that engender a mode of becoming periphery. This mode is comprised of three major processes of becoming: the first belies the notion of the peripheries as spaces LGBT individuals can only depart from; the second subverts the discourse of LGBT peripheries as empty spaces; and the third offers a dual consideration of the center-periphery power relationship, both accepting the structure and the peripheries&#...
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The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, both in Israel and beyond. The standard argument is that militarization processes create and reinforce dichotomous, hierarchical and... more
The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, both in Israel and beyond. The standard argument is that militarization processes create and reinforce dichotomous, hierarchical and essentialist perceptions of femininity and masculinity, thereby relegating women to the status of second-class citizens. 1 Given the militarist nature of Israeli society, this argument is pertinent to scholarship concentrating on Israel, which has long validated the contention. 2 However, in this chapter, we ask how Israeli women located at relatively powerful intersectional positions of ethnicity, class and nationality might, in fact, actually capitalize on their positionality to gain power in the military and political arenas.
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Gender imbalance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies and occupations is a well-known phenomenon with a large body of research that tries to explain it and offer remedial interventions. Data science is a new... more
Gender imbalance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies and occupations is a well-known phenomenon with a large body of research that tries to explain it and offer remedial interventions. Data science is a new and interdisciplinary STEM-oriented domain, integrating knowledge and skills from computer science, mathematics, and statistics with an application domain, from which the data draw their context and meaning. Data science applications are relevant for various domains, and therefore, a variety of populations are increasingly attracted to learning it. Addressing the theme of the conference, i.e., “Women in Engineering”, in this paper we describe a data science workshop for social sciences and digital humanities researchers. A significant majority (83%) of the participants of this workshop self-identified as women. This gender proportion, the opposite of that prevailing in STEM studies, led us to examine the workshop from a gender perspective. Our resul...
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The decriminalization of sodomy in Israel in 1988 transformed the political opportunity structure and heralded the local gay legal revolution that manifested in legal amendments, social movements, and the emergence of a flourishing,... more
The decriminalization of sodomy in Israel in 1988 transformed the political opportunity structure and heralded the local gay legal revolution that manifested in legal amendments, social movements, and the emergence of a flourishing, normative LGBT culture. Most activities were based in Tel Aviv with additional, scattered movements in other major Israeli cities. Since 1988, ongoing legal and political work have been taking place, with emphasis on a politics of assimilation. The Israeli LGBT social movements fit into a general trend of NGO-ization, by which organizations provide social services and endorse a national identity as a part of neoliberal governmentality. Palestinian movements and pro-BDS activists, however, do not participate in this co-option and assimilation process, resulting in deep segmentation of LGBT politics. Through this process, some LGBT social movements participate in and benefit from institutionalized encouragement and approval, while others protest state agen...
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Gay tourism is commonly studied through pride events in cities. Rethinking the role gay men’s bodies and politics play in the context of tourism to Israeli heritage sites, this paper contributes to...
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Growing attention has been devoted to the political geography of urban social movements but trauma, its urban context and spatial politics, have been significantly neglected. This paper aims to develop the concept of ‘queer urban trauma’... more
Growing attention has been devoted to the political geography of urban social movements but trauma, its urban context and spatial politics, have been significantly neglected. This paper aims to develop the concept of ‘queer urban trauma’ and its aftermath in the sense of urban and spatial activism, through an analysis of two traumatic events for the LGBT community in Israel. It explains how traumatic events taking place within urban contexts affect the spatial politics of LGBT and queer urban activism. Based on geographies of sexualities and queer theory, this paper aims to fill this gap by analysing traumatic events in two Israeli cities: the 2009 shooting of two young queers in a youth club in Tel Aviv, and the 2015 stabbing of a young girl during the Jerusalem Pride Parade. Tel Aviv is considered the liberal centre of Israel and a local ‘gay heaven’, as well as a destination for global gay tourism. Jerusalem on the other hand is usually described with a sense of alienation among ...
Research Interests: Sociology, Social Movements, Human Geography, Queer Studies, Israel Studies, and 15 moreTrauma Studies, Spatial Politics, Urban And Regional Planning, Loss and Trauma, Geographies of sexuality, Applied Economics, Trauma, LGBTq Activisms, LGBT Studies, Queer Activism, Sexual Politics, Urban movements, Queer Politics, Queer Movement, and Feminist and Queer Social Movements
Over the past decade, a growing number of critiques have been levelled at institutional LGBT initiatives in Tel-Aviv, characterising them as homonational and pinkwashing. Gay tourism to Tel-Aviv is one of the central initiatives under... more
Over the past decade, a growing number of critiques have been levelled at institutional LGBT initiatives in Tel-Aviv, characterising them as homonational and pinkwashing. Gay tourism to Tel-Aviv is one of the central initiatives under attack. Supported by national ministries and by local organisations, Tel-Aviv became a popular destination for a ‘gay vacation’. This paper explores the dynamic formation of the political economy of gay tourism to Tel-Aviv, underscoring the impact queer tourism has on Israeli LGBT politics and specifically on urban LGBT politics in Tel-Aviv. Particularly, this paper critically discusses neoliberal urban politics of LGBT value and valuation and its break from rights politics. I claim that the processes responsible for the increase in gay tourism to Tel-Aviv engendered confusion between rights achievements and recognition anchored in other kinds of national and municipal support (mainly allocations), encouraging fragmentation within the Israeli LGBT comm...
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Tel Aviv is becoming a hotspot for gay tourism through the support of municipal and national forces. The city is marketed as a Middle Eastern gay utopia, drawing tourists due to its location, LGBT nightlife, and Oriental flavor.... more
Tel Aviv is becoming a hotspot for gay tourism through the support of municipal and national forces. The city is marketed as a Middle Eastern gay utopia, drawing tourists due to its location, LGBT nightlife, and Oriental flavor. Meanwhile, local Israeli LGBT individuals strive to produce themselves as Western, both performatively and politically. This paper discusses how the Tel Aviv Municipality, the state, commercial actors, and LGBT individuals utilize Israeli ethnicities. We argue that the dissonance between Orientalist images and Westernization processes, which are particularly noticeable in the marketing of gay tourism to Tel Aviv, maintains a twofold construction of Tel Aviv as a Middle Eastern global city, which we term the Progressive Orient. Reinforcing the differentiation from the Middle East and other Arab countries, while embracing Orientalist images and tastes under the guise of authenticity, this particular kind of pinkwashing also differentiates the city as other tha...
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Abstract This paper uses framing theory to challenge previous understandings of queer safe space, their construction, and fundamental logics. Safe space is usually apprehended as a protected and inclusive place, where one can express... more
Abstract This paper uses framing theory to challenge previous understandings of queer safe space, their construction, and fundamental logics. Safe space is usually apprehended as a protected and inclusive place, where one can express one’s identity freely and comfortably. Focusing on the Jerusalem Open House, a community center for LGBT individuals in Jerusalem, I investigate the spatial politics of safe space. Introducing the contested space of Jerusalem, I analyze five framings of safe space, outlining diverse and oppositional components producing this negotiable construct. The argument is twofold: First, I aim to explicate five different frames for the creation of safe space. The frames are: fortification of the queer space, preserving participants’ anonymity, creating an inclusive space, creating a space of separation for distinct identity groups, and controlling unpredictable influences on the participants in the space. Second, by unraveling the basic reasoning for each frame and its related affects I show how all five frames are anchored in liberal logics and reflect specific ways in which we comprehend how queer subjectivities produce/are produced through safe space and its discourse.
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Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled by the municipality. This article focuses on the Gay-Center as a material, symbolic and discursive space in order to clarify the relationship between... more
Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled by the municipality. This article focuses on the Gay-Center as a material, symbolic and discursive space in order to clarify the relationship between LGBT individuals and the nation. Based on an ethnographic study, we show that since its establishment the Gay-Center has undergone centralization processes as a result of being located in central Tel Aviv and by striving for LGBT mainstreaming, thereby accelerating the achievement of sexual citizenship and urban belonging. However, the expansion of sexual citizenship, which is always based on processes of inclusion and exclusion, reveals homonational practices and homonormative discourses. Since being in the city is the easiest and, at times, the only way to earn sexual citizenship, we argue that LGBT urban citizenship is an indication, a marker and thus a prerequisite of homonationalism.
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In this article we stress the need for specifically located understandings of the concept of homonationalism, by introducing an analysis of spatial and political power relations dissecting disparate constructions of LGBT arenas. The... more
In this article we stress the need for specifically located understandings of the concept of homonationalism, by introducing an analysis of spatial and political power relations dissecting disparate constructions of LGBT arenas. The article explores three spaces: Tel-Aviv-an urban space of LGBT belonging; Jerusalem-the Israeli capital where being an LGBT individual is problematic both in public and in private spaces; and Kiryat-Shmona-a conservative and peripheral underprivileged town in the north of Israel. By showing how local understandings of queer space shape power relations and translate into subjective spaces within wide-ranging power dynamics, we claim that homonationalism cannot be seen as one unitary, consolidated category or logic. Instead, we argue, homonationalism should be considered a multidirectional and multiscale political stance, manifesting cultural practices and political relationship with the state and society in distinct settings. By expanding considerations of the nuanced interplay of state power and LGBT spaces we aim to elucidate some paradoxes of homonationalism.
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In 2019, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was hosted in Tel Aviv. Like other national contests such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, the ESC is a political event. For gay Israeli men who are ESC fans, this was an opportunity to... more
In 2019, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was hosted in Tel Aviv. Like other national contests such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, the ESC is a political event. For gay Israeli men who are ESC fans, this was an opportunity to become more integrated in the gay and national communities through homonormativity and homonational processes. However, as this case study shows, Israeli gay men ESC fans mostly rejected homonational masculinity in favor of a counterhegemonic identification, self-characterized as “ESC geeks”. In that, they adhered to their marginal space and adopted a subversive queer perspective. Analytically, this means that homonationalism should not be considered a political form of normalizing power that is accessible to all gay men. Rather, it is a process that produces manifold, including queer practices, and it can no longer be seen as accessible to all LGBTs, or as something into which LGBTs are duped.
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Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were... more
Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were perceived as “empty”, as spaces that have limited or no LGBT visibility and presence. This article focuses on LGBT activists ’ experiences in LGBT activist spaces in the peripheries. I argue that rather than reproducing the center-periphery power structure, LGBT activists are subverting the paradigm, while creating practices and imaginaries that engender a mode of becoming periphery. This mode is comprised of three major processes of becoming: the first belies the notion of the peripheries as spaces LGBT individuals can only depart from; the second subverts the discourse of LGBT peripheries as empty spaces; and the third offers a dual consideration of the center-periphery power relationship, both accepting the structure and the peripheries ’ place within...
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Research Interests:
Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were... more
Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were perceived as “empty”, as spaces that have limited or no LGBT visibility and presence. This article focuses on LGBT activists’ experiences in LGBT activist spaces in the peripheries. I argue that rather than reproducing the center-periphery power structure, LGBT activists are subverting the paradigm, while creating practices and imaginaries that engender a mode of becoming periphery. This mode is comprised of three major processes of becoming: the first belies the notion of the peripheries as spaces LGBT individuals can only depart from; the second subverts the discourse of LGBT peripheries as empty spaces; and the third offers a dual consideration of the center-periphery power relationship, both accepting the structure and the peripheries’ place within i...
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Research Interests:
המאמר מבקש להציג ולפתח את המושג טראומה קווירית אורבנית בהקשרים מרחביים של פוליטיקה עירונית, חברה אזרחית ואקטיביזם, ומתבסס על חיבור בין תיאוריה קווירית, (בעיקר תרומתה לפיתוח המושג "טראומה קווירית"), הכתיבה הסוציולוגית על טראומה ומשמעויותיה... more
המאמר מבקש להציג ולפתח את המושג טראומה קווירית אורבנית בהקשרים מרחביים של פוליטיקה עירונית, חברה אזרחית ואקטיביזם, ומתבסס על חיבור בין תיאוריה קווירית, (בעיקר תרומתה לפיתוח המושג "טראומה קווירית"), הכתיבה הסוציולוגית על טראומה ומשמעויותיה החברתיות, והכתיבה הגיאוגרפית העכשווית העוסקת בהיבטים המרחביים-פוליטיים של תנועות חברתיות עירוניות. המושג טראומה קווירית אורבנית מבוסס על מחקר השוואתי שבחן שני אירועים טראומתיים לקהילה הלהט״בית בישראל: הרצח של ניר כץ וליז טרובישי ופציעתם של בני נוער נוספים במועדון הברנוער באוגוסט 2009 בתל אביב, והדקירה והרצח של שירה בנקי במצעד הגאווה בירושלים באוגוסט 2015. שני אירועים אלה היו לא רק טראומה חברתית וקהילתית, אלא גם זרז לפעילות של תנועות חברתיות עירוניות ואקטיביזם בשתי הערים, שהגיבו למתרחש ורצו לחולל שינוי חברתי ופוליטי. מניתוח פעילותן של התנועות בשתי הערים עולה כי טראומה קווירית אורבנית משפיעה באופן שונה על פעולתן של תנועות חברתיות, בהתאם להקשר החברתי, התרבותי והפוליטי המקומי שלהן, לכוחות המעורבים בהן ולאופיין. ההשוואה בין התגובות לאירועים מאפשרת להצביע על האופנים שבהם מתעצב ומובנה אקטיביזם מרחבי באמצעות תנועות חברתיות עירוניות, להדגיש את התפקיד של אירועים טראומתיים בהנעתן לפעילות, ולהציע את הטראומה הקווירית האורבנית כמושג העומד מעבר למקרה הבודד.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Urban Geography, Queer Studies, Urban Politics, Queer Theory, and 13 moreTrauma Studies, Urban Studies, Urban Social Movements, Queer (Geography), Trauma, Activism, Cities, Geographies Queer, Gender and Queer Studies, Queer Geography, Urban Politics and Studies, Queer Geographies, and Queer Trauma
Gender imbalance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies and occupations is a well-known phenomenon with a large body of research that tries to explain it and offer remedial interventions. Data science is a new... more
Gender imbalance in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies and occupations is a well-known phenomenon with a large body of research that tries to explain it and offer remedial interventions. Data science is a new and interdisciplinary STEM-oriented domain, integrating knowledge and skills from computer science, mathematics, and statistics with an application domain, from which the data draw their context and meaning. Data science applications are relevant for various domains, and therefore, a variety of populations are increasingly attracted to learning it.
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המונח להט"ב בוחן את המרחב הלהט"בי בקיץ 2020, בעת התפרצות מגפת הקורונה בישראל
https://adva.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/lexicon-corona.pdf
https://adva.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/lexicon-corona.pdf
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The decriminalization of sodomy in Israel in 1988 transformed the political opportunity structure and heralded the local gay legal revolution that manifested in legal amendments, social movements, and the emergence of a flourishing,... more
The decriminalization of sodomy in Israel in 1988 transformed the political opportunity structure and heralded the local gay legal revolution that manifested in legal amendments, social movements, and the emergence of a flourishing, normative LGBT culture. Most activities were based in Tel Aviv with additional, scattered movements in other major Israeli cities. Since 1988, ongoing legal and political work have been taking place, with emphasis on a politics of assimilation. The Israeli LGBT social movements fit into a general trend of NGO-ization, by which organizations provide social services and endorse a national identity as a part of neoliberal governmentality. Palestinian movements and pro-BDS activists, however, do not participate in this co-option and assimilation process, resulting in deep segmentation of LGBT politics. Through this process, some LGBT social movements participate in and benefit from institutionalized encouragement and approval, while others protest state agenda and politics and work independently, exposing the central role homonationalism plays for Israeli LGBT movements and interest groups. Israeli homonationalism was induced through a continuous process of mainstreaming that was intensified by violent incidents that had major consequences for LGBT social movements in Israel. This violence broadened the scope of social movements' activism and influenced public opinion on LGBT issues as well as politicians' public support of LGBTs. As a result of these incidents, relationships between state authorities, municipalities, community activism, and LGBT social movements in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have changed dramatically. LGBT social movements in Tel Aviv used the municipal administration and urban space to transform the cultural and symbolic value of LGBT subjectivity, culture, and discourse, securing their dominance within the local arena. This local power, as revealed in the case of gay tourism to Tel Aviv, reshaped the capacity to negotiate with the government, creating an additional lobby for LGBT resources. Two currents dominating LGBT discourses have considerably influenced Israeli LGBT social movements' goals, agendas, practices, achievements, and networks: NGO-ization and homonationalism. Specifically, their interlacing with Israeli neoliberalism influenced LGBT movements' power to motivate change. The analysis of Israeli LGBT social movements traces major milestones, from the early stages in the 1980s to the 21st-century period of homonationalism, but it also challenges homonationalism as an invariable situation. Rather, new challenges galvanize new politics and power structures for LGBT social movements and for their endorsement by municipalities and the national government. The neoliberal perspective reveals that LGBT social movements keep on working, growing, and becoming more institutionalized and normalized. This, however, Gilly Hartal, The Gender Studies Program, Bar-Ilan University
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Research Interests:
Growing attention has been devoted to the political geography of urban social movements but trauma, its urban context and spatial politics, have been significantly neglected. This paper aims to develop the concept of 'queer urban trauma'... more
Growing attention has been devoted to the political geography of urban social movements but trauma, its urban context and spatial politics, have been significantly neglected. This paper aims to develop the concept of 'queer urban trauma' and its aftermath in the sense of urban and spatial activism, through an analysis of two traumatic events for the LGBT community in Israel. It explains how traumatic events taking place within urban contexts affect the spatial politics of LGBT and queer urban activism. Based on geographies of sexualities and queer theory, this paper aims to fill this gap by analysing traumatic events in two Israeli cities: the 2009 shooting of two young queers in a youth club in Tel Aviv, and the 2015 stabbing of a young girl during the Jerusalem Pride Parade. Tel Aviv is considered the liberal centre of Israel and a local 'gay heaven', as well as a destination for global gay tourism. Jerusalem on the other hand is usually described with a sense of alienation among LGBT and queer individuals and movements, where every political , spatial, cultural and financial achievement is a struggle. We argue that the politics of trauma are constructed differently in these two urban settings, producing important nuances of urban activism and politics. Through this empirical discussion, we develop the concept of 'queer urban trauma', revealing divergent forms of spatial visibility, presence and activity of the queer movements within urban spaces.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Queer Studies, Israel Studies, Trauma Studies, Queer Theory (Literature), and 15 moreSpatial Politics, Loss and Trauma, Geographies of sexuality, Urban Social Movements, Trauma, LGBTq Activisms, LGBT Studies, Queer Activism, Sexual Politics, Urban movements, Queer Politics, Queer Politics, Lgbtt Activism, Queer-Activism (Israel/Palestine), Queer Movement, and Feminist and Queer Social Movements
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Research Interests:
Queering Safety? An Introduction Concepts and ideas about the construction of safe(r) spaces have been around for decades; the labor of creating social space as a safe space within queer communities is a task of great importance (Hanhardt... more
Queering Safety? An Introduction Concepts and ideas about the construction of safe(r) spaces have been around for decades; the labor of creating social space as a safe space within queer communities is a task of great importance (Hanhardt 2013). This special issue of borderlands offers an interdisciplinary investigation of the ongoing discussion on queer safe spaces, seeing them as a contemporary and radical understanding and practice. The idea for this special issue developed as a result of the III Geographies of Sexualities Conference in Rome, in which we held a triple session on queer safe spaces in the summer of 2015. These sessions enabled an academic discussion on the topic, highlighting and starting to fill in the gaps in theorization and the numerous dilemmas it raises—both in academic and activist arenas. This special issue presents a collection of papers that aim to improve our understanding of the construction of safety within queer spaces, discourses, and realms, and the challenges such spaces face. This introduction presents a general theoretical framework of queer safe spaces, focusing on two dimensions: first, the logics that are produced through discourses of queer safe space and second, the practices that produce spaces as safe. Logics In order to give the reader a general introduction into our discussion of queer safe spaces, we would like to first discuss one of the ways in which the rhetoric, constructions, and expectations connected to queer safe spaces might result in unsafe spaces. In other words, we will examine one of the ways in which, paradoxically, the logics of queer safe spaces work to undo or restrict the sense of safety within queer
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Research Interests: Human Geography, LGBT Issues, Rural-urban migration, Feminism, Sexuality and space, and 11 moreSexual citizenship, Jerusalem, LGBT Studies, Centre-Periphery Relations, Queer Geography, Geographies of Sexualities, LGBTQ studies, Queer Politics, LGBT Activism, Space Safety Issues, and Belonging and Citizenship
סיכום למידעון של האגודה הסוציולוגית הישראלית, בנושא מיצובו של המחקר הלהט"בי והקווירי בישראל, לאחר קיום שולחן עגול בכנס של האגודה הסוציולוגית הישראלית תשע"ה - במכללת כנרת