ABSTRACT
‘“Perverse” and “Deviant” Queer Sexualities, Genders, Ethnicities and “Racialities”’ expands on the notion that certain types of non-normative ethnic/‘racial’ identities, for example, Black, Romani, Jewish, as well as sexual and gender identities, for example, lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, intersex, have come to be seen as perverse, pathological, deviant, abject, socially stigmatised and stigmatising markers for their bearers. It examines the construction of gendered and sexed, or sexualised, ethnicities/‘racialities’, as well as the construction of ethnicised and ‘raced’, or ‘racialised’, sexual and gender identities. The chapter explores what are, within the European context, often considered two of the most stigmatised and pathologised collective social, ethnic/‘racial’, sexual and gender identities – Roma, queer and their intersections: queer Romani identities. Just like non-normative sexualities and gender identities are often closets for queer people, Romani identity has become a kind of ethnic/‘racial’ closet due to being a negative, socially stigmatising marker for many Roma.
