Tone Hellesund

Heteronormative consensus in the Norwegian same-sex adoption debate?

This article investigates the Norwegian newspaper debate (1998–2002) on the right of homosexual couples to adopt children. It identifies two patterns of meaning within which both anti-adoption and pro-adoption sides of the debate were located: 1) the nuclear family as reference point; and 2) a focus on innate qualities. Parallell to a continuous liberalization of sexualities in Norway we seem to witness a consensus on heteronormativity in Norway on both sides of the debate as the basic axiom in public discussions on homosexuality and adoption. In this article, we explore the nature of the heteronormative arguments and the reason for their appearance in this particular debate. The two patterns of meaning reproduce a perception of lesbians and gays as either a worthy or unworthy minority. These findings may be seen as reflecting fundamental positions regarding the Norwegian modernization project, where both sides of the debate see homosexuality as a central symbol. State feminism may also have played the role of reinforcing gender categories and thereby served as an important condition of possibility for contemporary heteronormativity.

Living Apart Relationships in Contemporary Europe: Accounts of Togetherness and Apartness

Drawing on a European cross-national biographical-narrative study of intimate life, this article discusses the complexity of experiences of ‘togetherness’ and ‘apartness’ amongst people in living apart relationships. We explore the five main ways in which interviewees spoke about and understood their current living apart relationships (as: chosen; temporary; transitional; undecided; and unrecognisable), which we argue shows the need for a broader conceptualisation of this form of intimate relationship than is suggested by the established notion of ‘living apart together’. The article points to interviewees’ varying experiences of receiving or being denied recognition and acceptance by others as belonging to a couple, as well as to their differing degrees of desire for, or rebellion against, expectations that living apart relationships should ‘progress’ towards cohabitation.

Remaking intimate citizenship in multicultural Europe: experiences outside the conventional family

How can we understand the ways in which, and the extent to which, movements for gender and sexual equality and change have contributed to remaking intimate citizenship?1 The thorny question of the role of women’s movements in transforming citizenship in Europe is at the heart of this book, and this chapter extends this focus to encompass lesbian and gay movements, casting its gaze on a dimension of citizenship that owes its very conceptualization to these movements. In this, we are contributing to two theoretically and normatively significant moves within recent scholarship on citizenship: the feminist extension of the concept beyond its classical roots, its republican revolutionary reworkings and its traditional usage in political theory; and the sociological turn which has seen increasing emphasis on practices, meanings and lived experiences of citizenship.2

Close encounters: researching intimate lives in Europe

This research note aims to extend the discussion on the methodological implications of doing research on intimacy and personal life. Drawing on a comparative study concerned with the intimate lives of those who live outside the conventional, modern western nuclear family, it reflects on the processes of gaining access to often hard-to-reach populations which informed and influenced the empirical work that we carried out in four European countries.

Queering the Spinsters: Single Middle-Class Women in Norway, 1880–1920

ABSTRACT Constituting what may be called “a community of spinsters,” Norwegian middle-class unmarried woman played an important role in undermining and destabilizing the heterosexual cultural matrix during the period 1880–1920. In their anti-sexuality, self-sufficiency and hatred of men the spinsters challenged the heteronormativity of the period, and their queerness still presents a challenge to the harmony-oriented, heteromormative Norwegian womens history.