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“Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones”: A Personal Geography of Harassment
Author(s) -
Valentine Gill
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8330.00082
Subject(s) - geographer , harassment , constitution , identity (music) , sociology , sexual identity , lesbian , gender studies , human sexuality , law , aesthetics , social psychology , psychology , geography , political science , economic geography , philosophy
Over recent months I have received silent phone calls and malicious homophobic mail that has referred to my sexual identity, my research, my teaching, and my position within the discipline of Geography, and I have been “outed” as a lesbian to my parents. This paper attempts to unpack these experiences: first, by examining the different processes (all of which play upon the mutual constitution of my academic self and sexual self) through which my harasser has sought to exclude me from the discipline of Geography; second, by exploring the geography of this harassment—focusing on how malicious letters/calls can disrupt meanings of place, particularly the way that personal geographies can be taken for granted until they are transgressed; third, by considering geographies of the law. Finally, the paper reflects onthe mutual constitution of my sexual identity, geographical research and writing, academic identity as a geographer, and the discipline of Geography itself.