Queer and Trans People of Colour in the UK: Possibilities for Intersectional Richness (Transforming LGBTQ Lives)

149 Pages·2022·3.123 MB·English

by  Stephanie Davis

QUEER AND TRANS PEOPLE OF
COLOUR IN THE UK
This book explores the meanings of Queer and Trans People of Colour
(QTPOC) activist groups in the UK, considering the tensions around inclusion
and belonging across lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) and of
colour communities and wider British society.
Davis draws de-/anti-/post-colonial, Black feminist, and queer theory into
critical psychology to publish the frst book of its kind in the UK, developing
an intersectional understanding of QTPOC subjectivities and identities. The
book examines questions of belonging; racial melancholia; decolonising gender
and sexualities; and the joys, erotics, and the difculties of building and fnding
QTPOC community that can hold and celebrate our intersectional richness.
Ofering a radical and critical intervention into psychology, this volume will
be of key interest to scholars in Gender Studies and Queer Studies, Psychology
and Race, together with activists, community organisers, counsellors, and the
third sector.
Stephanie Davis is a scholar-activist, a Black queer troublemaker, and a Senior
Lecturer in Critical Psychology and Race at Nottingham Trent University.
She has a specifc interest in the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality;
critical psychology; decolonial, queer, and Black feminist theory; critical peda-
gogies; and decolonising academia. She has previously worked in a community
development and activist capacity on issues of sexual health with young people
and Black and brown communities and on issues facing her local c ommunity such
as police harassment and gender and sexual diversity. In 2013, she co-founded
Rainbow Noir, a social support and organising space for QTPOC in Manchester.
Stephanie has previously held Lectureships at the University of Brighton and the
University of East London. She was also a Research Ofcer on the NIHR-funded
Queer Futures 2 project which explored how to improve mental health provision
for LGBTQ youth in the UK. As an educator she is inspired by bell hooks’
‘education as the practice of freedom’ and strives to create learning environ-
ments with her students that encourage openness, dialogue, debate, and critical
thinking. As a scholar-activist she is excited by the possibilities of working both
within academia and beyond its boundaries.

Transforming LGBTQ Lives
Series Editors:
Katherine Johnson (RMIT University, Australia)
Kath Browne (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Transforming LGBTQ Lives hosts the best international scholarship on contem-
porary Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) issues. Innovative, inter-
disciplinary and intersectional, the series showcases theoretical and empirical
research that fosters debate, pushes disciplinary boundaries and shapes activism.
Extending feminist and queer scholarship through attention to a wide set of
disciplinary infuences (sociology, psychology, human geography, media and cul-
tural studies, social policy, leisure studies, sports studies, political science) topics
address the diversity of LGBTQ lives.
Recent titles in series:
The Everyday Lives of Gay Men
Autoethnographies of the Ordinary
Edited by Edgar Rodríguez-Dorans and Jason Holmes
Queer Roma
Lucie Fremlova
Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland
Joanna Mizielińska
Queer and Trans People of Colour in the UK
Possibilities for Intersectional Richness
Stephanie Davis
For more information about this series, please visit: www.Routledge.com/
Transforming-LGBTQ-Lives/book-series/LGBTQLIVES
QUEER AND TRANS
PEOPLE OF COLOUR IN
THE UK
Possibilities for Intersectional
Richness
Stephanie Davis
Designed cover image: ANASTASIIA DMITRIEVA / Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Stephanie Davis
The right of Stephanie Davis to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Davis, Stephanie (Lecturer in critical psychology), author.
Title: Queer and trans people of colour in the UK : possibilities for
intersectional richness / Stephanie Davis.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022036766 (print) | LCCN 2022036767 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138345768 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138345775 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780429437694 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429794810 (adobe pdf) |
ISBN 9780429794803 (epub) | ISBN 9780429794797 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Gays—Great Britain. | Sexual minorities—Great Britain. |
Transsexuals—Great Britain. | Intersectionality (Sociology)—Great Britain.
Classification: LCC HQ76.3.G7 D38 2023 (print) | LCC HQ76.3.G7 (ebook) |
DDC 306.760941—dc23/eng/20220804
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022036766
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022036767
ISBN: 978-1-138-34576-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-34577-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-43769-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429437694
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Exploring QTPOC lives 21
3 Theorising multiplicity 32
4 A question of belonging 49
5 Building community 69
6 Decolonising sexuality and gender 85
7 Conflict and harm in community: the possibilities for the
reparative and transformative 100
8 Conclusion 112
References 120
Index 129

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The beginnings of this book can be traced back to Manchester in late 2012,
early 2013 with a group of Black queer women deciding to make a space for
themselves and to build community with other queer and trans people of colour.
Thank you to those involved in co-founding Rainbow Noir, for co-creating a
place with me that felt like home and through which I met a beautiful community
and network of folks who showed me love, generosity, and the rich i ntersectional
beauty of our queerness and transness of colour. A blessing and a gift.
Thank you to the queer and trans people of colour communities in the UK
and those I have met across Europe for your creativity, commitment, and lov-
ing kindness in developing spaces, clubs, networks, festivals, and possibilities for
belonging and community.
Thank you to my participants without whom this work would not have been
possible, who shared and trusted me with their invaluable knowledge and under-
standings of what it means to be a queer and/or trans person of colour in the
world. It has been wonderful to spend the last seven years ‘thinking alongside’1
your words and thoughts, they have enriched my life, and I hope they will do
the same for others.
Thank you to the Egun (ancestors) who have blessed me with the fre in my
spirit and rebellion in my bones whose fugitivity pushes me forward to continue
to dream, imagine, create the possibilities for collective liberation and ways of
being free in the world. Thank you to my Grandad, Jerzy Marchelewicz, and my
Nan, Hyacinth Joyce Davis, who both passed during my academic training but
whose lives were a testament to resistance to fascism and coloniality and taught
me strength, boldness, love, and humour in the face of great difculty.
Thank you to Linda and Gerald Davis for encouraging and loving my critical,
or as Mum would call it ‘contrary’, thinking. Thank you for your emotional,
fnancial, and practical support in completing the PhD and this monograph.