Nina Held

Researching “Race” in Lesbian Space: A Critical Reflection

Feminist researchers have acknowledged that racial differences between researcher and researched impact on the research process; however, there has been little concern with how “race” is actually made in/through the research process. If we think “race” as performative and as always in the process of being made then this theoretical claim has crucial implications for research encounters. In this article the author draws on her own research, which focuses on processes of racialization. This ethnographic study was conducted in two lesbian bars in the North West of England. The article illustrates different ways of how “race,” in particular Whiteness, operated during the research process. The author critically reflects on her role in “race making” during this process and highlights the importance of acknowledging that researchers are also complicit in this making when doing research where “race” is not the central focus.

‘They look at you like an insect that wants to be squashed’: An ethnographic account of the racialized sexual spaces of Manchester’s Gay Village:

This article explores the interactive relationship between sexuality, ‘race’ and space. By drawing on ethnographic research with bisexual and lesbian women, it looks at the lived experiences of the intersections of sexuality and ‘race’ in a particular sexualized space, namely Manchester’s Gay Village. The article argues that this ‘primarily’ sexualized night-time leisure space is simultaneously racialized through the ways in which it is structured around whiteness, which is perpetuated through a somatic norm that operates in different ways. It explores perceptions of the Gay Village as a ‘racially neutral’ space, exclusionary practices such as door policies, practices of looking and touching, and expressions of sexual desire, all of which racialize bodies and spaces. Examining ways in which ‘race’ and sexuality work together to constitute space and how sexualized space that is inherently racialized constitutes racial-sexual subjectivities, the article demonstrates the significance of the spatial dimension of everyday intersectional experience and therefore calls for researchers to pay more attention to ‘space’ as a concept when researching intersectionalities.

Geisha of a different kind: race and sexuality in gaysian America

Who are we referring to when we talk about the “gay community?” Especially over the last decade, queer scholars have started interrogating the implicit racialization of the category “gay” and shown how the whiteness of gay spaces is maintained through exclusionary practices. Not many studies, however, provide such a thick description and analysis like C. Winter Han’s Geisha of a Different Kind. Focusing on gay (East and Southeast) Asian (or “gaysian”) American men, Han’s ethnographic study does not only vividly illustrate how “race” and sexuality intersect in the lives of these men, but it also rigorously explores how gender impacts on these intersections. Or, in other words, Han’s study is unique in the ways that it explores how sexuality is gendered and racialized; how gender is racialized and sexualized; and how “race” is gendered and sexualized. In order to gain some understanding of how these categories operate in contemporary life in the ++U.S., Han takes us on a, sometimes rather uncomfortable, journey. The five chapters of the book bring together historical constructions and media representations of “race” with lived experience and identity development to show