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For geographers doing qualitative research, autobiographical narratives offer a discrete avenue into life experiences, everyday lived geographies, and intimate connections between places and identities. Yet these valuable sources remain mostly untapped by geographers and largely unconsidered in methodological treatises. This article seeks to elicit the benefits of using autobiographical data, especially with regard to stigmatised sexual minorities in Western societies. Qualitative research among gay men, lesbians and bisexuals (GLB) is sometimes difficult; due to the ongoing marginalisation experienced by sexual minorities in contemporary Western societies, subjects are often difficult to locate and reticent to participate in research. But autobiographical writing has a long history in Western GLB subcultures, and offers an unobtrusive means to explore the interpenetration of stigmatised sexuality and space, of GLB identity and place. A keen awareness of the power of geography of spaces of concealment, resistance, connection, emergence and affirmation underpins the content and form of GLB autobiographical writing. I demonstrate this in part through the example of my own research into gay male spatiality in Australia. At the same time we need to be aware of the generic limitations of autobiographies. Nevertheless, this article calls for wider attention to autobiographical sources, especially for geographical research into marginalised groups.

The purpose of this paper is to set the groundwork for a new methodological movement. The author claims that methodological strategies must take as their object the laws with found sexual identity, or rather should be “fucking with” law by creatively confronting, occupying and agitating limiting ethical frameworks that control access to the field. The movement is ethnographic, since it finds research ethics and “straight” academic space to be where these rules are the most harmful in limiting access to the field, for female researchers, in particular.

The approach (but also to some extent the target) is on Deleuzian and post-Deleuzian’s philosophy, whose theoretical leaps have sought to shift and cause slippage in laws of sexual identity. However, when these laws are tested by researchers proposing to access the field, specifically ethnographically and autoethnographically, it is clear they have not “slipped” at all. This is clear through the questions raised by ethics committees. Fucking law, therefore, becomes a methodological movement intimately connecting ethical agendas and sex as an encounter in the field.

The author claims that the methodological movement of “fucking” law captures, or at least attempts to capture, the slipperiness of the body, the encounter, the research project and sex itself. The movement, “fucking law”, is essential in agitating and occupying the limiting institutional research agendas and their ethical frameworks.

The implications of “fucking law” will be necessarily unpredictable, but the main practical and connected social implication is questioning as to why more women are not practically questioning arguably one of the biggest questions: the ethics of sexuality. Fucking law argues for the questioning of these laws with bodies, and experimenting with philosophies which underpin and create institutional ethical rules.

This is the first work of its kind by a female autoethnographer challenging the ethics of sexuality, arising from a participatory field project. It also evaluates and confronts the ethics of the field as a whole: from the researcher herself, to her academic environment and sexual life, to the field itself and the writing up of the project.

Suggests that research specifically at the homeless lesbian, gay or bisexual person is sparse. Presents some of the stories found from interviewing 19 cases within their category. Shows that whilst the samples share characteristics with other homeless groups that can also be characterised in four distinct ways based on their sexuality. Looks at each group in turn. Highlights that whilst sexuality is often portrayed as one more disadvantage to deal with, it can become a way to inclusion. Cites some examples.

Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to introduce queer feminist cultural studies methodologies. For illustrative purposes, the chapter draws upon one specific study of locker room space undertaken by the author.

Design/methodology/approach – The design of the locker room study is delineated, including methods of data collection and analysis: self-reflective narratives, interviews, text and discourse analysis. Issues of contextualisation and insight into the use of queer feminist cultural studies methodologies to study normative geographies are foregrounded.

Findings – Findings acknowledge the systems of knowledge production that cohere around gendered and (hetero)sexed normative and non-normative bodies in locker room spaces.

Research implications – There is no quintessential queer methodology, which is a drawback to researchers trying to forge their way in this area. Instead, all interrogations and interpretations start from a critique of the (hetero)normative discourses and practices of gender and sexuality that take place at the expense of non-normative experiences.

Originality – The chapter provides an overview of queer feminist cultural studies theories and methodologies, for those unfamiliar with this post-positivist and counter-hegemonic approach. The author suggests that queer feminist cultural studies methodologies provoke us to ask the following questions: What new thoughts does my work make possible to think? What new emotions does my work make possible to feel? What new sensations and perceptions does it open up for diverse subjectivities? Such questions take researchers in new and exciting directions.

As a workplace, Higher Education has long been spatially socialized as a heteronormative with counter spaces (LGBTQ resource centers) in which assumptions about an individual's sexuality have been assumed as heterosexual or gay/lesbian pushing mononormativity. This study focused on the narratives of six bisexual faculty and staff to uncover how mononormativity is (re)produced in the workplace. We analyze the ways in which bisexual faculty and staff experience an unevenness of power in communicating their bi identity. We drew on Lefebvre's (1991) theory to understand how the social workplace is sexualized presenting our findings through an ethnodrama.

This chapter seeks to compare and contrast two compelling portrayals of the bisexual or ‘gender-blind’ vampire: The Hunger (1983) and American Horror Story: Hotel (2015). These texts present a number of notable differences. They were released over 30 years apart and they also diverge markedly in form: Hotel is a 12-episode television serial, whilst The Hunger is a tight 97-minute-feature film. Whilst these differences highlight shifts in the format of horror more broadly, they also facilitate the reflection on whether the portrayal of the bisexual vampire has dramatically shifted alongside these changes. Such a reflection is ripe with potential given that in addition to their differences, both texts also share significant aesthetic and narrative similarities. Both Hotel and The Hunger foreground performativity and feature female protagonists who defy heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality. Undoubtedly, Hotel can be read as an aesthetic homage to The Hunger. However, whether Hotel also echoes some of the more conservative aspects of the earlier film’s politics is a more complex question. Focusing on the ways that these female vampire protagonists, as well as a selection of their lovers and victims, are gendered, this chapter will illuminate a number of developments and lingering issues in the ways that horror depicts (or circumvents) complex facets of the relationship between bisexuality and gender.

Organisations seek to manage and control the dress, appearance and behaviour of their employees for strategic corporate advantage but what are the far‐reaching implications of this for employers and employees? This paper aims to identify the explicit and implicit codes for appearance and behaviour imposed by management and co‐workers.

Adopting a case study approach using ethnographic methods, this research, conducted in a recruitment agency specialising in placing construction industry personnel, draws on data obtained from four in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with senior managers, a focus group with female employees and participant observation methods, and provides an intriguing insight into the grooming and packaging of female employees. Findings – Findings show this aesthetic and behavioural “packaging” of the female employees comes with consequences for client, employer and employee. The females cannot escape the aesthetic and sexualised image imposed upon them as management strategy and often have no choice but to “perform” for clients to manipulate situations for their own advantage.

Because of the research approach adopted and the relatively small sample size, generalizability is limited. It would be helpful to replicate the study in other settings.

The paper highlights the existence of official and unofficial controls over dress, appearance and behaviour and the pressure exerted on women in the workplace.

Purpose – This article examines the relationship between strategic sports metaphors, such as “slam dunk” and “trash talk,” and white middle-class heterosexual masculine embodiment in competitive work environments. Competitive organizations, like sports arenas are contested spaces, and in these environments employees, like athletes, work to “position” themselves to maximize their chances of winning valuable projects and clients from other employees and competing companies.

Value of chapter – Unlike previous research which finds that men's use of sports at work is primarily a feature of male networks and socializing, the argument presented here is that sports tropes are used and enacted by men to structure the production process, including intra- and inter-organizational business meetings, client projects, and committee work. Sports references are also used to construct hegemonic masculinity at work, which results in women, gays and black men being constructed as inferior.

Research implications – The issues raised in this chapter will be useful for empirical studies that examine the relationship between the importance of sports at work, and whether groups such as women, gay men and lesbians, the disabled, older, and overweight business professionals identify with sports and whether this destabilizes assumptions of embodied heterosexual able-bodied male superiority.

Approach – The data used in this analysis draw upon the my background as a Division I collegiate basketball player and 10 years of experience and observations as a marketing professional and business executive in the financial services industry in the United States.

The purpose of this paper is to examine LGBT exclusion from sporting institutions, examining this as a phenomenon which takes place in specific spaces within these institutions.

A conceptual framework is developed which highlights the differences between initiatives to change heteronormative cultures at institutional levels and the levels of individual sporting spaces. This is applied to examples of heteronormative behaviour in sporting spaces and to diversity initiatives to promote LGBT participation in sport.

The paper argues that change initiatives are only effective if they engage with individual spaces within sports institutions rather than at a blanket institutional level.

The paper outlines links between similar findings in management and organisation literature and findings about sports organisations in the sports sociology literature. It outlines the role of institutions in both promoting LGBT inclusion in sport, but also in drawing LGBT participation towards mainstream heteronormative behaviours.