Almost 30 years later, silence is still here with us: introduction of the themed issue

Abstract

Since the milestone publication of Mapping Desire in 1995, geographies of sexualities have found increasing legitimacy and visibility through, among others, publications, conferences and the successful careers of some scholars in the field. However, the materiality of sex and bodies remains overlooked, this making Jon Binnie’s critique (e.g. 1997) of the squeamishness of academic knowledge still timely and relevant. By reflecting on the limitations of current geographies of sexualities scholarship, in this introduction we present the aims, contents and contributions of the themed issue as a whole and the different papers composing it. We conclude by acknowledging that the ‘dirty work’ of sex research cannot be left to individuals (often occupying marginalized positions) but requires a collective effort from the entire human geography academic community.

Keywords:

• Disembodiment
• geographies of sexualities
• human geography
• materiality
• SDG5: gender equality
• sex
• squeamishness

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Gender, Place & Culture for providing the space for this themed issue. Thanks in particular to Dr. Margaret Walton-Roberts for the guidance throughout the making of this issue. We thank all authors of this issue for their inspirational insights and thought-provoking ideas to bring back sex into geographies of sexualities. The conversations during and after the issue are what keeps on inspiring and motivating in our work. To Kacy, our co-conspirator, who would have probably co-edited this with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cesare Di Feliciantonio

Cesare Di Feliciantonio (he/him) is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University, specializing in geographies of sexualities, HIV, and housing and urban geographies. He is one of the editors of Social & Cultural Geography. His work has been published in, among others, Antipode; Dialogues in Human Geography; Geoforum; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research; Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Valerie De Craene

Valerie De Craene holds a PhD in Geography from KU Leuven, Belgium. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) funded by the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) on ageing, sexualities, and place. She is a feminist scholar and activist, and interested in everything that is related to: gender, sexuality, and manifestations of difference and inequality in the organization of space more broadly; epistemological, methodological and ethical dimensions of doing embodied research in relation to the production of knowledges in and beyond academia; and the politics and political economy of higher education and slow science and feminist resistances to the neoliberal university.