Constructions of diversity, hierarchies, and identity intersections in LGBTQ+ activists’ interview talk

Abstract

LGBTQ+ movements face significant challenges regarding tensions and dilemmas around membership, objectives, and relations within or between groups. This paper aims to explore the argumentative resources mobilized to construct LGBTQ+ activist claims and objectives in activists’ interview talk in Greece. For the purposes of the study, individual semistructured interviews with nine LGBTQ+ activists based in Thessaloniki and Athens were held. Analysis, drawing on critical discursive social psychology, indicated three central arguments. The first prioritizes a homogenizing liberal equality, and approaches differences in activist groups’ objectives as expected and beneficial diversity. The second problematizes (intra- and intergroup) difference-as-diversity as a potential obstacle to group collaboration, drawing attention to power imbalances. The third invokes broader “universal” and “apolitical” rights in order to construct the expansion of LGBTQ+ activist objectives as a necessary condition for inclusive activist action. In the discussion, we consider ways in which different argumentative resources are related to each other and to the ideological dilemmas that constitute the broader social fabric of participants’ argumentation. We also reflect on the rhetorical and social functions and implications of contradictory argumentative patterns, on the challenges they pose to LGBTQ+ movements, as well as on their potential to (dis)empower collaborations and intersectional politics.