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LGBT erasure (also known as queer erasure) refers to the tendency to intentionally or unintentionally remove LGBT groups or people from record, or downplay their significance, which includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people and those who identify as queer.[1][2][3] This erasure can be found in a number of written and oral texts, including popular and scholarly texts.
Queer historian Gregory Samantha Rosenthal refers to queer erasure in describing the exclusion of LGBT history from public history that can occur in urban contexts via gentrification.[4] Rosenthal says this results in the "displacement of queer peoples from public view".[5] Cáel Keegan describes the lack of appropriate and realistic representation of queer people, HIV-positive people, and queer people of color as being a type of aesthetic gentrification, where space is being appropriated from queer people's communities where queer people are not given any cultural representation.[6]
Erasure of LGBT people has taken place in medical research and schools as well, such as in the case of AIDS research that does not include lesbian populations.[citation needed] Medicine and academia can be places where visibility is produced or erased, such as the exclusion of gay and bisexual women in HIV discourses and studies or the lack of attention to LGBT identities in dealing with anti-bullying discourse in schools.[citation needed]
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Main article: Straightwashing |
Straightwashing is a form of queer erasure that refers to the portrayal of LGBT people, fictional characters, or historical figures as heterosexual.[7] It is most prominently seen in works of fiction, whereby characters who were originally portrayed as or intended to be homosexual, bisexual, or asexual are misrepresented as heterosexual.[8][9]
Bisexual erasure (or bi erasure), also called bisexual invisibility, is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or re-explain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, the news media, and other primary sources.[10][11][12]
In its most extreme form, bisexual erasure can include the belief that bisexuality itself does not exist.[10][12] Bisexual erasure may include the assertion all bisexual individuals are in a phase and will soon "choose a side", either heterosexual or homosexual. Another common variant of bisexual erasure involves accepting bisexuality in women while downplaying or rejecting the validity of bisexual identity in men.[13] One belief underlying bisexual erasure is that bisexual individuals are distinctively indecisive.[14] Misrepresentations of bisexual individuals as hypersexual erases the sexual agency of bisexuals, effectively erasing their true identities as well.[15]
Bisexual erasure is often a manifestation of biphobia,[10][11][12] although it does not necessarily involve overt antagonism. Erasure frequently results in bisexual-identifying individuals experiencing a variety of adverse social encounters, as they not only have to struggle with finding acceptance within general society but also within the LGBT community.[16] Bisexual erasure is a form of stigma and leads to adverse mental health consequences for people who identify as bisexual, or similar, such as pansexual.[17][18]|
Further information: Gay lifestyle and Adam and Steve |
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See also: Cisnormativity |
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In 2007, Julia Serano discusses trans-erasure in the transfeminist book Whipping Girl. Serano says that transgender people are "effectively erased from public awareness" due to the assumption that everyone is cisgender (non-transgender) or that transgender identification is rare.[22] The notion of transgender erasure has been backed up by later studies.[23]
Aromantic people are often erased due to the societal expectation that everyone prospers with an exclusive romantic relationship, something that Elizabeth Brake has coined as the term amatonormativity. Aromantic people face continued pressure and prejudice to conform to the "social norms" and form a permanent romantic relationship such as marriage.[24][25]
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Main article: Asexual erasure |
Intersex and transgender individuals are often erased in public health research which conflates sex and gender (see sex–gender distinction).[26] The narrow and inflexible definitions of sex and gender in some countries means some intersex and non-binary people are unable to obtain accurate legal documents or identification, preventing their access to public spaces, jobs, housing, education and basic services.[27] It is only recently that the concept of legal rights for intersex people has been considered,[28] even in LGBTI activist circles. However, there is a growing intersex activist community which campaigns for intersex human rights, and against intersex medical interventions which they see as unnecessary and mistreatment.[29]
