Abstract
In this article, I set out to explore various intersectional social constructions of ethnicity, religion and sexuality. First, I conduct an analysis of recent public controversies in Flanders (Belgium) about women’s and (homo)sexual equality as set against religious authorities and religious-ethnic minorities. It reveals how dominant understandings of ethnicity, sexuality and religion are constructed, reinforced and, if needed, defended. Second, I foreground a critical counter-voice negotiating these what I call ‘ethno-sexular’ boundary constructions. I analyse the lived experiences of Hajar, a volunteer of an antiracist LGBTQI organisation located in Brussels, and argue that because of a dominant ethno-sexular discourse, Hajar’s hybrid identifications and critical voice is made illegible in much of her social environment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 62-89 |
| Number of pages | 28 |
| Journal | Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 19 Dec 2017 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativesLicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in
any way.
Keywords
- Religion-secularity
- ethnicity
- sexuality
- public discourse
- counter-voice