"Just a friend": Emerging contemporary sex and gender social movements

My doctoral project is about emerging sexual and gender movements (the expansion of LGBTQQIA+ umbrella). I’m interested in why this is happening now and what it suggests about gendered and sexual citizenship in Western cultures.

I’m a social and cultural anthropologist  who looks at the framed scripts that movement members utilise to engage, organise and mobilise around sexual and gendered identity-formations.

I’m particularly interested in asexual activism as an illustrative case example of an emerging sexual and gendered social movement.

The title “Just a friend” is a quote from a participant in the pilot study that initiated my research. All of my work is empirically-based. It focuses on collecting data by talking to, listening to and observing sexual and gender social movement activists; both about their activist practices and while they engage in them.

Joseph De Lappe
Research Student
Faculty of Child & Youth Studies
The Open University

joseph.de-lappe@open.ac.uk