Publication details
Idle Ally: LGBT Community in the Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | What forms has the LGBT movement been taking in this legal and social environment? How has the Czech gay and lesbian community changed in recent decades and what is its relationship to the feminist movement? Trying to address these questions as comprehensibly as possible within the scope of a single chapter, I will draw on two empirical data sources: gay men and lesbian women’s recollections about the community in the 1980’s on the one hand, and interviews about lesbian parenting on the other. The chapter thus focuses on two different generations and two disparate contexts, including both the totalitarian Czechoslovakia and the post-1989 context. Time-wise, it covers the period between the 1980s and 2010. I draw on twelve interviews with gay men and two interviews with lesbian women that I carried out regarding questions of gay and lesbian community in the communist era, as well as on my interviews with seventeen lesbian families (thirty four women) I conducted as part of my 2004-2009 post-doctoral research. Comparing and combining information about the experiences of gay men in totalitarian Czechoslovakia with those of contemporary lesbian mothers in the Czech Republic provides an opportunity to explore different aspects, strategies and phases of the community, as well as questions concerning identity politics, legality/illegality, formal and informal organizing, and private and public expressions of these communities. |