This article by Dr. Lucie Fremlova is not only about how LGBTQ+ Romani people face prejudice from the majority for being who they are, but also about how they are discriminated against by minorities, such as their Roma community, for being part of the LGBTQ+ community. But it is also about explaining Roma history, their position in society and how they see themselves.
 

Author. Dr. Lucie Fremlová

Research paper. Výzkumný článek

Date of publication: September 2020

 

Introduction

Students of Roma Studies have theorized and conceptualized Roma as a minority ethnicity and social group that is fundamentally different from non-Roma in almost every respect. Such research is undoubtedly important in describing the causes and forms of inequality or in designing possible policy interventions. However, the foregrounding of ethnicity may unwittingly contribute to rewriting the distinctive essentialist 'difference attributed to Roma people'. At the same time, there is

evidence within the research that individuals who identify (or are identified) as Roma may simultaneously make other identifications that are more important to them, and that Roma people have identities characterised by hybridity, super-diversity, intersectionality and queer identification. However, there is also an evidence that Romani queers experience Romani ethnic identity in ordinary, everyday ways.
 

Roma people with minority sexual and gender identities experience oppression and structural inequality both as Roma people and as lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersex and queer-identifying (LGBTQ+) people because of the position they occupy in society and because of negative social evaluations of their non-normative ethnic/racial, sexual/gender and other identities. Despite the large body of literature on Roma people, there is a dearth of information on the experiences of LGBTQ+ Roma in academic literature, including gender journals. This article intends to compensate for the aforementioned lack of literature by exploring conceptualizations of Roma identities based on the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ Roma.

 

This article first briefly introduces the basic terminology, research methods and methodology. It then discusses the dominant conceptualization of Romani identity in Romani studies, as well as alternative ways of understanding Romani identities that offer intersectionality and queer theorizing, particularly queer assemblage. It outlines how these concepts allow for a transcendence of the 'ethnic' frame of reference in Romani Studies, where ethnicity has often been foregrounded. Having established this conceptual framework, Dr. Lucie Freml's article goes on to explore and analyze the empirical evidence. In the next section, she reflects on how LGBTQ+ Roma women/men experience and manage multiple oppressions at the intersection of ethnicity/race, gender/gender, sexuality and gender identity. It then discusses LGBTQ+ Romani women's experiences of anti-gayism, the enactment (or lack thereof) of non-normative sexual and gender identities as a result of experiences of rejection, and lesser-known experiences of acceptance from families, communities, and other kinship structures. It argues that the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ Roma people present a fundamental challenge to one-dimensional, essentialising and homogenising conceptualisations of Roma identities.

 

Data were generated through participant observation, focus groups and interviews with LGBTQ+ Romani people and were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings reveal that individuals who self-identify as Roma also identify multiple times based on other reasons, including gender/gender, sexuality, gender identity, or class. In this article, Dr. Lucie Freml argues that a reading of intersectionality in conjunction with queer assemblage - "queer intersectionality" - benefits queer (non-normative) intersectional understandings of Roma identities because it is not anchored in notions of fixed "groupness" or essentialist difference, while also allowing us to identify and interrogate the inequitable workings of the asymmetrical hegemonic and power relations that constitute binary social normativity.

To read the whole article, click here: 
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bup/ejpg/2020/00000003/00000003/art00005#