Feeling Seen: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ Peoples, (In)Visibility, and Social-Media Assemblages

Andrew Farrell

doi:10.3390/genealogy5020057

Abstract

This article explores shifting social arrangements on social media as experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) peoples. These digital social assemblages are situated within a broader context of heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism in Australia and beyond. In digital spaces, multiple marginalised groups encounter dialogic engagements with their friends, followers, networks, and broader publics. The exploration of how digital discourses (in)visibilise Indigenous LGBTIQ+ diversities underline the intimate and pervasive reach of settler colonialism, and highlight distinctly queer Indigenous strategies of resistance. Through the experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ artists, activists, and celebrities, this article demonstrates the shifting unities and disunities that shape how we come to know and understand the complexities of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ identities and experiences.

Highlights

Social media provide a discursive landscape that enables Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) peoples to be seen, heard, and understood
The examples explored in this paper demonstrate that LGBTIQ+ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples contend with shifting social and cultural developments, and are actively responding to societal fluctuations that both accept and reject them
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ community is publicly coming out as gender and sexually diverse by presenting and performing their identities online, and are actively and passively enriching what we know about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander genders and sexualities

Summary

Introduction

Social media provide a discursive landscape that enables Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) peoples to be seen, heard, and understood. These positive outcomes are negotiated alongside the negative and adverse effects of social media. This article adopts the concept of “assemblages” from Deleuze and Guattari (1988) to analyse how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ peoples utilise and negotiate social media to assert their lived complexities. Through the affordances of social media, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ peoples push against material and symbolic articulations of settler-colonial logics online through the assertion of sovereign identities that render diverse Indigenous gender, sex, and sexual intersubjectivities visible

Legibility and Assemblage Thinking

Public Sphere

Digital Platforms and Community Assemblages

Influence and Celebrity

Conclusions