Journal articles on the topic 'Gay pride parades – Europe'

This article discusses Pride Järva, a ‘gay pride’ march organised by right-wing publicist Jan Sjunnesson in Stockholm’s northern suburbs. Analysing the event, and in particular a speech made by Sjunnesson during the parade in July 2016, I argue that it is indicative of the specific ways in which right-wing actors in Europe increasingly enlist LGBT rights in nationalist, xenophobic and racist projects of exclusion. As markers of tolerant and progressive ‘Europeanness’, they are used to construct and reproduce dangerous racialised and Islamic others along lines of sexuality and gender, a narrative that resonates with established notions of Swedish gender exceptionalism as well as homonationalist-orientalist narratives of threat and protection. Despite their history of actively opposing the expansion of LGBT rights, Sjunnesson and his political associates combine these narratives with a conceptualisation of LGBT issues as private and depoliticised to produce themselves as the ‘true’ protectors of LGBT rights in Sweden.

Only a few years ago rights of sexual minorities in Poland caused not only national controversies over what democracy means, but also gained international attention, visible in demonstrations in front of embassies in Berlin and London, wide media coverage, and protest letters to the Polish prime minister by the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights as well as Amnesty International and the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA). Several Polish politicians were repeatedly cautioned for their extreme conservative stance on homosexual issues and homophobic remarks as well as criticized for the prohibitions of the so-calledMarsz Równości(Equality March), the Polish version of the Christopher Street Day (usually known as Gay Pride Parade) as being against the standards of democracy and human rights. Finally, and in particular as a reaction to the various remarks of Polish politicians, a resolution against homophobia was submitted to the European Parliament in January 2006 and passed in June 2006. Despite the resolution, the then Polish minister of education, Roman Giertych (League of Polish Families, or LPR), caused another great stir at the European Union (EU) conference of ministers of education in Heidelberg, Germany, on March 1, 2007, when he stated that brochures on sexuality education published by the Council of Europe that contained information on homosexuality and homosexual relations were to be prohibited in Polish schools. In the same speech, he rebuked societies that allowed abortion on social grounds and called abortion a “legal crime” and a “new form of barbarism.”

Recently, a number of Canadian police forces have been banned from Pride parades. A ban on uniformed police in these parades has proven to be contentious; the general public and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and plus (LGBTQ+) communities have been split on the issue. Limited research has examined the perspectives of the general population or, until now, LGBTQ+ people on this matter. Using an online survey designed to gather ideas or opinions of LGBTQ+ community members regarding their hopes, aspirations, and vision for the St. John’s Pride board, 181 LGBTQ+ respondents responded to this question: Should the police be allowed to march in uniform at the St. John’s Pride parade? In total, 92 (51%) said “Yes.” A critical analysis of their qualitative responses revealed four interrelated themes: (a) power of Pride, (b) “they are we and we are they,” (c) “the police are on our side,” and (d) taking back Pride. Implications of the findings for police-LGBTQ+ community relations are discussed.

Foundation stones in the resource mobilization theory of social movements are the notions of “conscience adherents” and “conscience constituents,” first introduced by McCarthy and Zald in 1977. In this article, we revisit the concept of conscience adherent, by applying it to individuals and groups that are direct supporters of an LGBT movement, but who do not stand to directly benefit from the success should the movement accomplish its goals. Using quantitative data collected during Pride parades in Stockholm, Haarlem, London, and Warsaw, we analyze the group of participants who reported that they were lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender and compare them to heterosexual and gender-conforming participants, identifying factors that explain why people in the latter category participate in Pride parades. We argue that experiences of discrimination, knowing people from the beneficiary group, and/or subscribing to general principles of justice, contribute to conscience adherent participation. Furthermore, based on interviews with Pride parade organizers, we argue that mobilizations based on a more inclusive political strategy will attract more non-LGBT participants.

The LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) community is warmly embraced by the city of Tel Aviv. This phenomenon is exemplified by the fact that the Tel Aviv City Hall has been taking a leading part in the organization, financing, and promotion of Pride parades and events in recent years. The present article analyzes a quantitative survey of overseas participants in the 2016 Pride events in Tel Aviv. It explores the motivations, attitudes, satisfaction, and behaviors of tourists, both LGBTQ+ and non- LGBTQ+. The results show that Tel Aviv is perceived as gay friendly by all participants, regardless of their affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community. We discuss the advantages of being a gay-friendly city via high visibility and social inclusion. Finally, we address ‘pinkwashing’, an umbrella term employed to describe the efforts by Israeli authorities to promote a positive image of Israel despite its questioned geopolitical reputation.

This article argues that public space is important for marginalised communities in order to ensure visibility and presence in public life. Often minority groups are excluded from democratic procedures which favour majority interests and preferences. This is not to say that minority interests are incompatible with those of the majority but some marginalised groups are not anchored in public space, can suffer discriminatory treatment and lack the ability to control dominant, usually negative, ascriptions of group identity. This article explores two cases of marginalised communities and access to public space in post-socialist Europe: Roma and the LGBTI communities. Both communities have attempted to ensure their presence in public space through ‘Pride’ parades across Central and Eastern European capitals. The purpose of pride parades is to demand rights as citizens, such as equality and respect, and to ensure visibility in public life. On the one hand, visibility is important for LGBTI communities who remain relatively hidden and fear ‘coming out’. On the other hand, for Roma, who are highly visible, pride offers an opportunity to harness this visibility to challenge prevailing negative stereotypes through an affirmation of group identity.

This study aims at identifying whether the behaviour of gay tourists on leisure trips manifests categories of post‑modern hedonism as posited by the French philosopher, Michel Onfray. The methodology used was a quali‑qualitative study, based on exploratory‑descriptive research. We chose to prepare a survey‑ ‑type research, which collected 1,403 responses from gay and bisexual male tourists. The results identified a profile of gay Brazilian tourists diverging from that found in the world tourism organisation reports. Al‑ though the group analysed does not represent high income nor international travel, they are domestic tour‑ ists and show no interest in travelling to participate in LGBTQIA+ Pride Parades; and disassociate them‑ selves from the LGBTQIA+ sex tourism segment. Michel Onfray’s hedonistic behavior is thus confirmed

This article demonstrates that José Pérez Ocaña's political performances open up the possibility of questioning the narrative of the transition to democracy in Spain as one resulting from political consensus. Using sources available in documentaries and in the archives of the counterculture, the essay studies Ocaña as a political subject of the transition. Among his public acts, the essay considers his street performances, his sexually explicit performance in the Canet Rock music festival and in International Anarchist Days in 1977, and his problematic participation in gay pride parades in Barcelona. In his public appearances, Ocaña eroded the distinction between public and private while asserting his right to appear. Despite his prominence in countercultural realms, gay activists and anarchist organizations rejected him. I argue that Ocaña opted to disidentify with all labels as he confronted both gender norms and the countercultural public sphere.

Migration is associated with the search for a more permissive environment. By linking Paris as a place of attachment, the author sees that Paris in this case can be indicated as the “home” for Indonesian gays. The feeling of “full gay” is a feeling that they never get when they stay in Indonesia. That is why many Indonesian gays decide to move out of Indonesia in any way regardless of the difficulties they face in the destination country. This paper answer two questions: what do we understand by “Gay-friendly city”? And if we talk about Jakarta, “can Jakarta be categorized as a gay-friendly city”? The author interviewed eight Indonesian gays directly in Paris with the naturalistic paradigm and analyzed with the qualitative research, and what will be found in this paper is the narrative of the eight informants. It can be said that the Indonesian gays who have migrated to Paris do not feel that their lives have been wasted. They do diaspora by going to gay bars and participating in gay pride parades. What they feel is a feeling of freedom to be able to channel their gender and sexual expression, and they found that Paris as a gay-friendly city is a kind of space of resistance.

In what ways did Sydney's Gay Games reinvent the Australian nation? In this paper I set out to examine this question by drawing upon the idea that sports and parades of athletes during opening ceremonies have been definitive moments for the Australian nation. I investigate the social terrains or bodyscapes invoked by sporting gay pride during the participants' parade at the opening ceremony and sports venues of the Sydney 2002 Gay Games. This enables insights into whether these spaces subverted the heteronormativity of sporting bodies that are metaphors for Australian national space. I centre my argument within a post-Foucauldian performance theory to consider both lived experience and textual representations of queer sports spaces. This approach advocates a recursive relationship between power, discourse, and critically reflexive, geographically embedded subjects. The ethnographic basis of my findings is participant observation and a time series of in-depth interviews with over forty self-identifying gay and queer males living in Sydney. I extract two overarching themes from the bodyscapes of the games: transcendence and imprisonment. For those actively involved in the making of camp bodyscapes, mimicking the monopoly of the dominant order through the authority of national signification provided by the parade of athletes at opening ceremonies and by sporting bodies offered a transgressive vehicle. However, the pillar of hetero-normative sporting bodies in defining Australian national boundaries survived unchallenged. Sporting gay pride also worked to close rather than to open up a space for discourses about sexuality and national identity to occur. Closure from a mainstream audience occurred by jettisoning the shame that links sport, sex, and bodies. Closure also occurred amongst certain respondents who shunned the games, regarding it as disciplining bodies into ‘normalcy’.

Legislative reforms have been introduced in several European states to tackle the question of the legal recognition of same-sex relations, with the Nordic countries taking the lead.1 Changes in the attitude of the general public towards gays and lesbians, as demonstrated by the publicity and popularity of Gay Pride marches throughout Europe, has brought the issue to the fore of the political and legal arenas. France has been no exception, with the public debate on the recognition of same-sex couples culminating in the recent adoption of the law relating to the Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PACS) which provides for the registration of a couple's partnership regardless of sex.

Homophobia is present in contemporary Serbian society as a rather widespread treatment of non-heterosexuality. It is manifested through various forms of public hate speech, through the forms and cases of discrimination and violence that are caused by homophobia, and through the homophobia-caused deprivation of members of the LGBT population of their various rights, particularly the right to the freedom of peaceful public assembly. Such homophobia is mostly shown by research data recently obtained by the Serbian LGBT rights groups (such as Gay Straight Alliance and Labris) and by media reporting on the recent public events (mostly on three recent attempts to organise Pride Parades in Belgrade, in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012). The research data showed that homophobia originates mostly from a lack of knowledge and a stereotyped comprehension of the people and relations among them, while its main protagonists in Serbia are nationalists, traditionalists, conformists and those who believe that hating others is the proper and even only way to defend their national and territorial integrity, as well as a reflection of their genuine patriotism. The spheres in which it is active include all social relations, from private and family, through professional, to public, media and political relations. Research data obtained in recent years by LGBT organisations provide evidence that homophobia is still very prevalent in Serbia, in some respects somewhat more so than in 2008, when the first research of that type was conducted.

During an outbreak of hepatitis A predominantly among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2004, we did a case-control study to determine risk factors for infection. A case was an MSM >17 years, living in Copenhagen, with IgM positive hepatitis A infection diagnosed between June and August 2004, and without a household contact with a hepatitis A case before onset of illness. Controls were selected at the Copenhagen Pride Festival. The study included 18 cases and 64 controls. Sixteen of 18 cases and 36/63 controls had sex with casual partners (ORMH 5.6, 95% CI 1.2-26.9). Eleven of 18 cases and 14/62 controls had sex in gay saunas (ORMH 4.2, 95% CI 1.5-11.5). Sex at private homes appeared to be protective (ORMH 0.2, 95% CI 0.1-0.7). Casual sex including sex in gay saunas was an important risk factor for the spread of HAV among MSM in Copenhagen. The results are in accordance with findings in other European outbreaks. As the general immunity to hepatitis A decreases and the outbreak potential increases, we recommend health education and hepatitis A vaccination to all MSM not living in monogamous relationships, especially if they visit gay saunas or other places with frequent partner change. To stop spread of hepatitis A among MSM in Europe, a European consensus on prevention and control measures may be required.

LGBT rights have come to be seen as allied with the idea of “Europe” and a European identity, particularly in the process of European Union enlargement to the East. Scholars have examined the ways in which external norms interact with more local, often “traditional” norms and identities. In this process, nationalism and conceptions of national identity and gender/sexuality norms can be seen as important factors that influence the domestic adoption of LGBT rights, particularly in the post-war Balkans. Croatia and Serbia (from approximately 2000 to 2014) present two interesting and different cases to analyze how discourses and dynamics of national and state identity construction, nationalism, and LGBT rights relate to discourses of “Europeanness” and European identity and how these affect the political dynamics of LGBT rights. This article finds that in Croatia, national identity was constructed in terms of convergence with European norms and identity, homonationalism was used to distinguish themselves from a “Balkan” identity, and there was a lower threat perception of the LGBT community framed primarily as a “threat to the family.” In Serbia, state and national identity was constructed in opposition to Europe and homosexuality had stronger threat perception, framed primarily as “threat to the nation.” In short, nationalism and national identity were less disadvantageous as a domestic constraint to LGBT rights in Croatia than in Serbia. The dynamics between nationalism and LGBT rights played out, for example, in the politics of the marriage referendum, Pride Parades, and public discourse more generally. This research contributes to the scholarship on LGBT rights and nationalism by empirically analyzing the different ways that nationalism, gender/sexuality, and European identity interrelate and influence LGBT rights change in a changing post-war identity landscape and how domestic constraints affect human rights norm diffusion.

Despite all the positive changes due to European integration processes, the problem of prejudiced and negative attitudes towards people with “non-traditional sexual orientation” in Ukraine traditionally remains unresolved, homosexuality is taboo and it is “sinful”, and homophobic attitudes are often perceived as “truly moral” Christian virtues. The empirical study on psychological characteristics of the development and manifestation of young people’s homophobia performed by us has demonstrated existing contradictions in young people’s attitudes to homosexuality. On the one hand, young men and women belong to a fairly progressive, quite tolerant part of society. On the other hand, our data have revealed homophobic behaviour often manifested by young people. Many young people showed homo-negativism - denial and negative attitude towards certain aspects of homosexuality. Thus, very many young men and women believed that homosexuality was dangerous, since it could cause a “possible demographic crisis”, “spread of diseases”, “dissolution of the family as a social institution” and “harmful effects on a future generation’s psyche”. Many young people were convinced that an obviously demonstrated homosexual lifestyle increased the number of people with a non-traditional orientation, therefore gay pride parades, same-sex marriages, and adoption of children by homosexuals should be banned. Negative ideas about homosexual people and prejudice against them were formed not because young people’s own experience, since they practically did not know homosexuals, but due to stereotypical thinking, non-professional publications in the media and due to the lack of proper education in the field of gender psychology. In our opinion, homonegativism and homophobia shared by young people exist because of inadequate, not scientifically proven information about homosexual people, biased perception of sexual minorities based on shocking images of entertainers, film characters etc. We believe that overcoming homonegativism and homophobia is possible through the refutation of myths, stereotypes and prejudices regarding various aspects of human sexuality with psychological education and through an adequate state policy that should not contribute to anti-homosexual xenophobic attitudes.

The year 2008 by all means will be remembered by several events, which contributed to significant progress in the domain of legal recognition of various aspects of same sex communities. There were also several initiatives contributing to making the political will necessary for legal changes. The most visible one probably was the May recognition of same sex marriage by the Supreme Court of California, which was valid only 5 months before it was cancelled by the referendum held in November 2008. Since this American state has 38 million inhabitants, more than the whole Balkan region, the event was visible by the whole world. The paper provides further analysis of mostly European events, e.g. decisions of European courts in Strasbourg and Luxembourg, political interventions by the EU Parliament Intercrop, releases of the ILGA-Europe, gay pride marches, other public activities, e.g. exhibition in the EU Parliament regarding the International Day of Human Rights, adoption of various documents relevant for the EU member states and permanent changes in internal legal provisions of the member states. The UN Declaration against discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation and gender identity concluded the year. The paper also comprises analysis of a few typical cases of implementation of family relations among same sex partners.

While southern Mexico’s state of Guerrero has faced rising socio-political violence and impunity for over a decade, with particular consequences for sexual and gender minorities, an LGBTTTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, travesti and intersex) rights movement has simultaneously emerged in the state capital, Chilpancingo, and in other cities and towns. In 2002, activists organised the state’s first Pride march in this small, peripheral Latin American city, and each year since, people have gathered for what has become an annual event in this remote place nevertheless formed by what happens in distant centres of power. Also, LGBTTTI marches, parades, drag competitions and other events meant to orient the community and state institutions towards recognition of the rights of sexual and gender minorities have extended to public spaces across the state. This article examines this incongruous actuality through a study of the photos and videos in the private collection of a local activist and professional photographer, visual data that provide a unique record of how the local LGBTTTI movement has drawn on transnationally recognisable symbols and local cultural motifs to bring attention to violence experienced by its members. Building on a dense description of this archive, this paper argues that an identity-rights-based movement can coexist with a weak state that has abdicated its responsibility to guarantee basic human rights. Through its use of urban public spaces, such a movement can convey its message and draw people together, though given the limits of state-sanctioned impunity it may opt for strategic silence on wider socio-political issues in order to make specific advances.

This essay originates out of our shared interest in genres and media forms used for identity practices that do not cohere into a narrative or a fixed representation of who someone is. It takes the current heightened visibility of drag as a mode of performance that explicitly engages with identity as a product materialized—but not completed—by the ongoing process of performance. We consider the new drag, which we define below, as a form of playing with identity that combines bodily practices (comportment and use of voice) and adornment (make-up, clothing, wigs, and accessories) with an array of media (photography, live performance, social media and television). Given the limited space available, we will not be engaging with the propositions made during earlier feminist and queer thinking that drag is not inherently subversive and may reinscribe gender and race norms through their hyperbolic recitation (Butler 230-37; hooks 145-56). While we think there is much to be gained from revisiting these critiques in light of the changes in conceptualisations of gender in queer subcultures, we are not interested in framing drag as subversive or resistant in relation to the norms of masculinity and femininity. Instead, we follow Eve Sedgwick’s interest in reparative practices adopted by queer-identified subjects who must learn to survive in a hostile culture (“Paranoid”) and trace two lines of analysis we identify in drag’s new found visibility that demonstrate the reparative potential of automedia.At time of writing, RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) has truly hit the big time. Pop icon Christina Aguilera was a guest judge for the first episode of its tenth season (Daw “Christina”), and the latest episode of RuPaul’s All-Stars season three spin-off show was the most-watched of any show in its network’s history (Crowley). RuPaul Charles, the producer and star of RPDR, has just been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, decades after he began his career as a drag performer (Daw “RuPaul”). Drag queens are finally becoming part of American mainstream media and drag as an art form and a cultural practice is on its way to becoming part of discourse about gender and identity around the world, via powerful systems of digital mediation and distribution. RPDR’s success is a good way to think about how drag, a long-standing performance art form, is having a “break out” moment in popular culture. We argue here that RPDR is doing this within an automedia framework.What does automedia mean in the context of drag on television and social media? We understand automedia to be about the mediation of identity when identity is both a product of representation and a process that is continually becoming, expressed in the double meaning of the word “life” as biography and as process (Poletti “Queer Collages” 362; Poletti and Rak 6-7). In this essay we build on our shared interest in developing a critical mode that can respond to forms of automedia that explore “the possibility of identity in the absence of narration” (Rak 172). What might artists who work with predominantly non-narrative forms such as drag performance show us about the ongoing interconnection between technologies and subjectivities as they represent and think through what “life” looks like, on stage and off?Automedia names life as a process and a product that has the potential to queer temporality and normative forms of identification, what Jack Halberstam has called “queer time” (1). We understand Halberstam’s evocation of queer time as suitable for being thought through automedia because of their characterisation of queer as “a form of self-description in the past decade or so … [that] has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time and space” (2). Queer time, Halberstam explains, comes from the collapse of the past and shaky relation to futurity gay men experienced during the height of the American AIDs crisis, but they also see queer time, significantly, as exceeding the terms of its arrival. Queer time could be about the “potentiality of a life unscripted by the conventions of family, inheritance, and child rearing” (2). Queer time, then, evokes the possibility of making a life narrative that does not have to follow a straight line or stay “on script,” and does not have to feature conventional milestones or touchstones in its unfolding. If queer time can be thought alongside automedia, within drag performances that are not about straight lives, narrative histories and straight time can come into view.Much has been written about drag as a performance that creates a public, for example, as part of a queer world-building project that shoots unpredictably through spaces beyond performance locations (Berlant and Warner 558). Halberstam’s shift to thinking of queer time as an opening of new life narratives and a different relation to time has similar potential when considering the work of RPDR as automedia, because the shift of drag performance away from clubs, parades and other queer spaces to television and the internet is accompanied by a concern, manifested in the work of RuPaul himself, with drag history and the management of drag memory. We argue that a concern with the relationship between time and identity in RPDR is an attempt to open up, through digital networked media, a queer understanding of time that is in relation to drag of the past, but not always in a linear way. The performances of season nine winner Sasha Velour, and Velour’s own preoccupation with drag history in her performances and art projects, is an indicator of the importance of connecting the twin senses of “life” as process and product found in automedia to performance and narration.The current visibility of drag in popular culture is characterised by a shifting relationship between drag and media: what was once a location-based, temporally specific form of performance which occurred in bars, has been radically changed through the increased contact between the media forms of performance, television and social media. While local drag queens are often the celebrities (or “superstars”) of their local subcultural scene, reality television (in the form of RPDR) and social media (particularly Instagram) have radically increased the visibility of some drag queens, turning them into international celebrities with hundreds of thousands of fans. These queens now speak to audiences far beyond their local communities, and to audiences who may not have any knowledge of the queer subcultures that have nurtured generations of drag performers. Under the auspices of RPDR, drag queens have gained a level of cultural visibility that produces fascinating, and complex, encounters between subcultural identity practices and mainstream media tropes. Amongst her many tasks—being fierce, flawless, hilarious, and able to turn out a consummate lip sync performance—the newly visible drag queen is also a teacher. Enacting RuPaul’s theory of identity from his song title—“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” (“Born”)—drag queens who in some way embody or make use of RuPaul’s ideas have the potential to advance a queer perspective on identity as a process in keeping with Judith Butler’s influential theory of identity performativity (Butler 7-16). In so doing they can provide fresh insights into the social function of media platforms and their genres in the context of queer lives. They are what we call “new” drag queens, because of their access to technology and digital forms of image distribution. They can refer to classic drag queen performance culture, and they make use of classic drag performance as a genre, but their transnational media presence and access to more recent forms of identification to describe themselves, such as trans, genderqueer or nonbinary, mark their identity presentations and performance presences as a departure from other forms of drag.While there is clearly a lot to be said about drag’s “break out,” in this essay we focus on two elements of the “new media” drag that we think speak directly, and productively, to the larger question of how cultural critics can understand the connection between identity and mediation as mutually emergent phenomena. As a particularly striking practitioner of automediality, the new drag queen draws our attention to the way that drag performance is an automedial practice that creates “queer time” (Halberstam), making use of the changing status of camp as a practice for constructing, and mediating identity. In what follows we examine the statements about drag and the autobiographical statements presented by RuPaul Charles and Sasha Velour (the winner of RPDR Season Nine) to demonstrate automediality as a powerful practice for queer world-making and living.No One Ever Wins Snatch Game: RuPaul and TimeAs we have observed at the opening of this essay, queer time is an oppositional practice, a refusal of those who belong to queer communities to fall into step with straight ideas about history, futurity, reproduction and the heteronormative idea of family, and a way to understand how communities mark occasions, conceptualize the history and traditions of subcultures. Queer time has the potential to rethink daily living and history differently and to tell accounts of lives in a different way, to “open up new life narratives,” as Halberstam says (2). RuPaul Charles’s own life story could be understood as a way to open up new life narratives literally by constructing what a queer life and career could mean in the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. His 1995 memoir, Lettin It All Hang Out, details RuPaul’s early career in 1980s Atlanta, Georgia and in New York as an often-difficult search for what would make him a star. RuPaul did not at first conceptualize himself as a drag star, but as a punk musician in Atlanta and then as part of the New York Club Kid community, which developed when New York clubs were in danger of closing because of fear of the AIDS epidemic (Flynn). RuPaul became adept at self-promotion and image-building while he was part of these rebellious punk and dance club subcultures that refused gender and lifestyle norms (Lettin 62-5). It might seem to be an unusual beginning for a drag star, but as RuPaul writes, “I always knew I was going to be star [but] I never thought it was going to be as a drag queen” (Lettin 64). There was no narrative of mainstream success that RuPaul—a gay, gender non-binary African-American man from the American Midwest—could follow.Since he was a drag performer too, RuPaul eventually “had an epiphany. Why couldn’t I [he] become a mainstream pop star in drag? Who said it couldn’t be done?” (Workin’ It 159). And he decided that rather than look for a model of success to follow, he would queer the mainstream model for success. As he observes, “I looked around at my favorite stars and realized that they were drag queens too. In fact every celebrity is a drag queen” (Lettin 129). Proceeding from the idea that all people are in fact drag artists—the source of RuPaul’s aformentioned catch-phrase and song title “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” (“Born”), RuPaul moved the show business trajectory into queer time, making the “formula” for success the labour required of drag queens to create personae, entertain, promote themselves and make a successful living (and a life) in dangerous work environments—a process presented in his song “Supermodel” and its widely-cited lyric “You better work!” (“Supermodel”). The video for “Supermodel” shows RuPaul in his persona as Supermodel of the World, “working” as a performer and a member of the public in New York to underscore the different kinds of labour that is involved, and that this labour is necessary for anyone to become successful (“Supermodel” video).When RuPaul’s Drag Race began in 2010, RuPaul modelled the challenges in the show on his own career in an instance of automedia, where the non-narrative aspects of drag performance and contest challenges were connected to the performance of RuPaul’s own story. According to one of RuPaul’s friends who produces the show: “The first season, all the challenges were ‘Ru did this, so you did this.’ It was Ru’s philosophy” (Snetiker). As someone who was without models for success, RuPaul intends for RPDR to provide a model for others to follow. The goal of the show is the replication of RuPaul’s own career trajectory: the winners of RPDR are each crowned “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” because they have successfully learned from RuPaul’s own experiences so that they too can develop their careers as drag artists. This pattern has persisted on RPDR, where the contestants are often asked to participate in challenges that reflect RuPaul’s own struggles to become a star as a way to “train” them to develop their careers. Contestants have, like RuPaul himself, starred in low-budget films, played in a punk band, marketed their own perfume, commemorated the work of the New York Club Kids, and even planned the design and marketing of their own memoirs.RPDR contestants are also expected to know popular culture of the past and present, and they are judged on how well they understand their own “herstory” of the drag communities and queer culture. Snatch Game, a popular segment where contestants have to impersonate celebrities on a queer version of the Match Game series, is a double test. To succeed, contestants must understand how to impersonate celebrities past and present within a camp aesthetic. But the segment also tests how well drag queens understand the genre of game show television, a genre that no longer exists on television (except in the form of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy), and that many of the RPDR contestants are not old enough to have seen, performing witty taglines and off-the-cuff jokes they hope will land in a very tight time frame. Sasha Velour, the winner of season nine, won praise for her work in the Snatch Game segment in episode six because, acting on advice from RuPaul, she played Marlene Dietrich and not her first choice, queer theorist Judith Butler (RuPaul’s). Sasha Velour was able to make Dietrich, a queer icon known for her film work in the 1920-1940s, humorous in the game show context, showing that she understands queer history, and that she is a skilful impersonator who understands how to navigate a genre that is part of RuPaul’s own life story. The queer time of RuPaul’s narrative is transmitted to a skill set future drag stars need to use: a narrative of a life becomes part of performance. RPDR is, in this sense, automedia in action as queens make their personae “live,” perform part of RuPaul’s “life” story, and get to “live” on the show for another week if they are successful. The point of Snatch Game is how well a queen can perform, how good she is at entertaining and educating audiences, and how well she deals with an archaic genre, that of the television game show. No one ever “wins” Snatch Game because that is not the point of it. But those who win the Snatch Game challenge often go on to win RPDR, because they have demonstrated improvisational skill, comic timing, knowledge of RuPaul’s own life narrative touchstones and entertained the audience.Performative Agency: The Drag Performance as Resource for Queer LivingVelour’s embodied performance in the Snatch Game of the love and knowledge of popular culture associated with camp, and its importance to the art of drag, highlights the multifaceted use of media as a resource for identity practices that characterizes drag as a form of automedia. Crucially, it exemplifies the complex way that media forms are heavily cited and replayed in new combinations in order to say something real about the ways of living of a specific artist or person. Sasha Velour’s impersonation of Dietrich is not one in which Velour’s persona disappears: indeed, she is highly commended by RuPaul, and fans, because her embodiment of Dietrich in the anachronous media environment of the Snatch Game works to further Velour’s unique persona and skill as a drag artist. Velour queers time with her Dietrich in order to demonstrate her unique sensibility and identity. Thus, reality TV, silent film, cabaret, improvisation and visual presentation are brought together in an embodied performance that advances Velour’s specific form of drag and is taken as a strong marker of who Sasha Velour is.But what exactly is Sasha Velour doing when she clarifies her identity by dressing as Marlene Dietrich and improvises the diva’s answers to questions on a game show? This element of drag is clearly connected to the aesthetics of camp that have a long tradition in gay and queer culture. Original theories of camp theorized it as a practice of taste and interpretation (Sontag)—camp described a relationship to the objects of popular culture that was subversive because it celebrated the artificiality of aesthetic forms, and was therefore ironizing. However, this understanding of camp does not adequately describe its role in postmodern culture or how some queer subcultures cultivate the use media forms for identity practices (O’Neill 21). In her re-casting of camp, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues:we need to [think of camp] not in terms of parody or even wit, but with more of an eye of its visceral, operatic power: the startling outcrops of overinvested erudition; the prodigal production of alternative histories; the ‘over’-attachment to fragmentary, marginal, waste, lost, or leftover cultural products; the richness of affective variety; and the irrepressible, cathartic fascination with ventriloquist forms of relation. (Sedgwick The Weather 66)This reframing of camp emphasises affect, attachment and forms of relation as ongoing processes for the making of queer life (a process), rather than as elements of queer identity (a product). For Sedgwick camp is a practice or process that mediates queerness in the context of a hostile mainstream media culture that does not connect queer ways of living with flourishing or positive outcomes (Sedgwick “Paranoid Reading” 28). In O’Neill’s account, camp does not involve attachment to the diva as a fixed identity whose characteristics can be adopted in irony or impersonation in which the individual disappears (16). Rather, it is the diva’s labour—her way of marshalling her talent to produce compelling performances, which come to be the hallmark of her career and identity—that is the site of queer identification. What RuPaul wittily refers to as a drag queen’s “charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent” (the acronym is important), O’Neill refers to as the diva’s “performative agency”—the primary “power to perform” (16, emphasis in original). This is the positive power of camp as form of automediation for queer world making: media forms provide resources that queer subjects can draw on in assembling a performance of identity as modes of embodiment and ways of being that can be cited (the specific posture of Dietrich, for example, which Velour mimics) and in terms of the affect required to marshal the performance itself.When she was crowned the winner of season nine of RPDR, Sasha Velour emphasised the drag queen’s performative agency itself as a resource for queer identity practices. After being announced the winner, Velour said: “Let’s change shit up. Let’s get all inspired by all this beauty, all this beauty, and change the motherfucking world” (Queentheban). This narrative of the world-changing power of the beauty of drag refers to the visibility of the new drag queens, who through television and social media now have thousands of fans across the world. Yet, this narrative of the collective potential of drag is accompanied by Velour presenting her own autobiographical narrative that posits drag as an automedial practice whose “richness of affective variety” has been central to her coming to terms with the death of her mother from cancer. In interviews and in her magazine about drag (Velour: The Drag Magazine) Velour narrates the evolution of her drag and her identity as a “bald queen” whose signature look includes a clean-shaven head which is often unadorned or revealed in her performances as directly linked to her mother’s baldness brought on by treatment for cancer (WBUR).In an autobiographical photo-essay titled “Gone” published in Velour, Velour poses in a series of eight photographs which are accompanied by handwritten text reflecting on the role of drag in Velour’s grieving for her mother. In the introduction, the viewer is told that the “books and clothes” used in the photos belonged to Velour’s mother, Jane. The penultimate image shows Velour lying on grass in drag without a wig, looking up at the camera and is accompanied by nineteen statements elucidating what drag is, all of which are in keeping with Sedgwick’s reframing of camp practices as reparative strategies for queer lives: “Drag is for danger / Drag is for safety / Drag is for remembering / Drag is for recovering.” Affect, catharsis, and operatic power are narrated and visually rendered in the photo-essay, presenting drag as a highly personal form of automediation for Velour. The twentieth line defining drag appears on the final page, accompanied by a photograph of Velour from behind, her arms thrown back and tensile: “Drag is for dressing up / And this is my mother’s dress.”Taken together, Velour’s generic and highly personal descriptions of drag as a process and product that empowers individual and collective queer lives define drag as a form of automedia in which identity and living are a constant process of creativity and invention “where ideas about the self and what it means to live are tested, played with, rejected, and embraced” (Rak 177).Velour’s public statements and autobiographical works foreground how the power, investment, richness and catharsis encapsulated in drag performance offers an important antidote to the hostility to queer ways of being embodied by an assimilationist gay politics. In a recent interview, Velour commented on the increased visibility of her drag beyond her localised performances in “dive bars” in New York:When Drag Race came on television I feel like the gay community in general was focussed on […] dare I say, a kind of assimilation politics, showing straight people and the world at large that we are just like everyone else and I think drag offered a radical different saying [sic] and reminded people that there’s been this grand tradition of queer people and gay people saying ‘actually we’re fabulously different and this is why.’ (PopBuzz)Velour suggests that in its newly visible forms outside localised queer cultures, drag as a media spectacle offers an important alternative to the pressure for queer people to assimilate to dominant forms of living, those practices, forms of attachment and relation Halberstam associates with straight time.ConclusionThe queer time and performative agency enacted in drag provides a compelling example of non-narrative forms of identity work in which identity is continuously emerging through labour, innovation, and creativity (or—in RuPaul’s formulation—charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent). This creativity draws on popular culture as a resource and site of history for queer identities, an evocation of queer time. The queer time of drag as a performance genre has an increasing presence in media forms such as television, social media and print media, bringing autobiographical performances and narratives by drag artists into new venues. This multiple remediation of drag recasts queer cultural practices beyond localised subcultural contexts into the broader media cultures in order to amplify and celebrate queerness as a form of difference, and differing, as automediality.ReferencesBerlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24.2 (Winter 1998): 547-566.Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.Crowley, Patrick. “‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Sets New Franchise Ratings Records.” Billboard. 2 Mar. 2018 <https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/8225839/rupauls-drag-race-sets-franchise-ratings-records>.Daw, Stephen. “Christina Aguilera Will Be First Guest Judge of ‘RuPaul's Drag Race’ Season 10.” Billboard. 1 Mar. 2018 <https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/8223806/christina-aguilera-rupauls-drag-race-season-10>.———. “RuPaul to Receive a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” Billboard. 1 Mar. 2018 <https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/8223677/rupaul-hollywood-walk-of-fame-star>.Flynn, Sheila. “Where Are New York’s Club Kids of the 80s and 90s Now?” Daily Mail. 4 Sep. 2017 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4851054/Where-New-York-s-Club-Kids-80s-90s-now.html>.Halberstam, J. Jack. “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies.” In a Queer Time and Place. New York: NYU P, 2005. 1-21.hooks, bell. “Is Paris Burning?” Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End, 1992.O’Neill, Edward. “The M-m-mama of Us All: Divas and the Cultural Logic of Late Ca(m)pitalism.” Camera Obscura 65.22 (2007): 11–37. Poletti, Anna, and Julie Rak, eds. “Introduction: Digital Dialogues.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 1-25.Poletti, Anna. “Periperformative Life Narrative: Queer Collages.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 22.3 (2016): 359-379.PopBuzz. “Sasha Velour Talks All Stars 3, Riverdale and Life after Winning RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 16 Feb. 2018 <https://youtu.be/xyl5PIRZ_Hw>.Queentheban. “Sasha Velour vs Peppermint | ‘It's Not Right But It's Okay’ & Winner Announcement.” 23 Jun. 2017 <https://youtu.be/8RqTzzcOLq4>.Rak, Julie. “Life Writing versus Automedia: The Sims 3 Game as a Life Lab.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 38.2 (Spring 2015): 155-180.RuPaul. “Born Naked.” Born Naked. RuCo, Inc., 2014.———. Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography. New York: Hyperion Books, 1999.———. “Supermodel (You Better Work).” Supermodel of the World. Tommy Boy, 1993.———. “Supermodel (You Better Work).” Dir. Randy Barbato. MTV, 1993. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9LOrHU8JI>.———. Workin’ It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.RuPaul’s Drag Race. RuPaul. World of Wonder Productions. Season 9, 2017.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Weather in Proust. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2011.———. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.” Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction. Ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 1-37.Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991. 53-65.Snetiker, Mark. “The Oral History of RuPaul.” Entertainment Weekly (2016). <http://rupaul.ew.com/>.WBUR. “Sasha Velour on Why Drag Is a ‘Political and Historical Art Form’.” 24 July 2017. <http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/07/24/sasha-velour>.Velour, Sasha. “Gone (with Daphne Chan).” sashavelour.com. <http://sashavelour.com/work/#/daphnechan/>.

IntroductionContemporary societies are increasingly becoming sites in which it is more difficult for people to respectfully negotiate disagreements about human diversity. This is exemplified by people who must oppose oppressive social conventions that marginalise them because they identify as belonging to one or more minority groups. One of the key factors in this dynamic is how people’s being in particular sites impacts their being as a person. The “fate of the stranger” is shaped by the spaces they inhabit and people are labelled as “insiders or outsiders” (Amin Land 2); for many people this means our societies are sites of dissatisfaction. For example, in some sites asylum seekers and refugees are referred to as “co-habitant and potential citizen,” while in other sites they are referred to as “impure and threats” (Amin Land 2). This process of defining a person’s being is also experienced by people who are “multi-abled, multi-sexed, multi-sexual, or multi-faith” (Garbutt 275). This article provides a reading of the Human Library in relation to contemporary understandings of space from human geographers such as Ash Amin, as a way of rethinking our everyday spaces as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference. It primarily draws on my researching and organising Human Libraries across Australia.Protest can employ both instrumental and expressive forms of activism. Instrumental activism aims to change law or policy, gain improvements in living conditions, and win important human services. Expressive activism is often understood as a continuum of political acts extending from lawful demonstrations through to violent activities. Recent studies demonstrate that protest has developed beyond such conventional forms (Dalton, Van Sickle, and Weldon). Contemporary protest includes such things as: acts of spontaneity (Snow and Moss); advocating rights via cultural rather than political protest (Bruce); and activating spatial politics by engaging in urban public spaces to highlight long-standing socio-spatial inequalities (Marom).These examples demonstrate the tension that exists within contemporary protest. While some people accuse expressive activism of being “a thing-for-itself that is not aimed at producing results”, others recognise that “both expressive and instrumental activism are necessary and important” (Maddison and Scalmer 69-71). Far from being self-interested, protest that adopts expressive activism offers its practitioners an important tool:Expressive activism is oriented towards the construction, reconstruction and/or transformation of norms, values, identities and ways of living and being. It is not just about ‘who we are’ […] but also about ‘how we are’ in the world, consequently requiring evaluation of ‘what we do’ and ‘how we do it’. (Stammers 164-165)This understanding of expressive activism provides a useful lens for reading the Human Library as a means of rethinking everyday spaces as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference. This is particularly so because the Human Library, as an activist organisation dedicated to increasing respect for difference, is situated within the contemporary anti-prejudice movement (Stammers; Chesters and Welsh; Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'").Introducing the Human LibraryHuman Libraries transform the spaces provided by traditional libraries into spaces that challenge contemporary socio-spatial dynamics. Human Libraries provide people (Readers) with a safe space in which they can choose another person (a volunteer known as a Human Book) and engage in a conversation or ‘reading’ about the way that people perceive and experience difference. Readers choose their Human Books from a catalogue of titles and descriptions which are developed by each Human Book.and express something about how they identify. For example, titles include such things as belonging to sexual minority groups, living with physical or mental impairment, or belonging to different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Each ‘reading’ is defined by three rules: 1) you may raise any topic or ask any question; 2) a ‘reading’ is a dialogue so Human Books ask their Readers questions too; and 3) each person may decline to answer any question and to end the reading at any time. Using this method, Human Libraries protest the way in which socio-spatial norms marginalise people who are different. They enact a form of expressive activism that reconstructs the way that norms are used in local sites to marginalise different ways of living and being. This reconstruction of the relationship between norms and sites enables people to be “who we are” and “how we are” without having to be inauthentic about “what we do” and “how we do it” (Stammers 164-165).The first Human Library took place at the Roskilde Festival (Denmark) in the summer of 2000 and as an international activist organisation within the anti-prejudice movement, has since become active in over 80 countries and used in a variety of local community sites thus demonstrating its ability to “transcend borders and be adapted to different situations” (Abergel et al. 13). It now operates in such diverse settings as local libraries, universities, schools, music and cultural festivals and workplaces. Participants’ (Organisers, Readers and Human Books) reflections on their experiences of engaging in Human Libraries helps to illustrate how they perceive Human Libraries as sites that challenge socio-spatial norms.Human Libraries enable people to create sites that reverse our usual social interactions. The following phrases, used by participants to describe their contact with the Human Library, illustrate this. An Organiser, whose local government job requires her to develop projects that encourage interactions between in-groups and out-groups, explains that Human Libraries bring people who usually live “on the margins […] into the centre of the page” and that “the powerful people […] who are usually in the centre” are required to listen to different experiences. Likewise, Human Books describe themselves as being “totally open” in order to encourage their Readers to ask about topics that society labels as “taboo”. Readers illustrate how they encounter Human Libraries in ways that the other spaces in their day-to-day lives function. One Reader talks about “stumbling upon” a Human Library within a community event and describes this as “a kind of a stroke of brilliance to catch people at a place like that rather than in a more conventional library setting”. Other Readers emphasise the significance of this type of encounter when they explain that they “probably wouldn’t just go and bother someone in the street” and that participating in a Human Library has provided a type of conversation “that doesn’t happen in any other way”. The outcome of this is highlighted by a Reader who explains that she pushed herself “to go beyond […] just a polite social conversation” because the Human Library “lays it all out there and says, we’re here to talk” (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'" 124-132). These descriptions of people’s experiences of Human Libraries demonstrate how they perceive Human Libraries as spaces that enable them to have conversations with people they would not normally speak to about topics they would usually feel unable to speak about. Their examples are better appreciated when considered along with the scholarship on the interconnectedness of space and intergroup relations.The Interconnectedness of Space and Intergroup RelationsA multiplicity of spaces shape people’s everyday lives. The everyday refers to the “flow of routine” often defined by such mundane habitual practices as going to work, crossing streets and shopping (Dirksmeier and Helbrecht 495). Who a person is, where a person lives, the spaces a person can enter and move about, and how a person is treated in those spaces are intertwined. Belonging is not an abstract concept; as people move in and out of different spaces they demonstrate how belonging is “experienced differentially, and the pleasures and powers it confers are not distributed evenly but [are] linked to relations of inequality and practices of social exclusion” (Noble and Poynting 490). This warns us against romanticizing the urban space of the city and regarding it over-simplistically as neutral and accessible to all, as a space of open flow and untroubled human interaction and as a natural catalyst for proximate reflexivity (Noble and Poynting; Amin and Thrift; Amin Land; Priest et al.).Acknowledging the negative impacts inherent in the interconnectedness of the city and intergroup relations, some scholars have moved their attention from examining integration at the macrospatial level of society to studying the microecology of segregation (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon, Tredoux and Clack; Alexander and Tredoux; Priest et al.; Thomas; Dandy and Pe-Pua; Dixon and Durrheim; Durrheim et al.). This shifts the focus from a primary interest in the city and the neighbourhood to a closer examination of people’s everyday life spaces. This focus examines how members of different groups “share proximity and co-presence” (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux 2) and engage in informal practices that uphold barriers (Alexander and Tredoux; Dixon and Durrheim). For example, people were observed as they shared spaces such as beaches, school cafeterias and university class rooms and were found to use these spaces in ways that enacted segregation along lines of race, ethnicity, age, and gender. In examples such as these, everyday life spaces are seen to function in ways that (re)instate borders around difference through everyday spatial practices and they act as sites in which “informal segregation practices can be enacted and reproduced” (Priest et al. 32). The shift in scholarly interest to the microecology of segregation serves my interest in how we might use everyday spaces as sites to contest segregation. The following discusses three everyday spaces that serve this interest.The Space of the Everyday UrbanThe macrospatial terrain of the world’s cities and towns is increasingly defined by difference and their public spaces are often spaces of “visibility and encounter between strangers” (Amin "Ethnicity" 967). Negotiating difference is a natural part of living in these large urban spaces and it is an increasingly more common experience in, what was previously, the typically homogenous setting of rural communities. This process of negotiation occurs most noticeably within the microecology of the “everyday urban,” a context defined by the interconnection of everyday spaces and intergroup relations (Alexander and Tredoux; Durrheim et al.; Dixon and Durrheim). It is here that we find “the micropolitics of everyday social contact and encounter” (Amin "Ethnicity" 959). These everyday spaces include our streets, parks, malls, and cafes, and they are often described as shared spaces of freedom, mingling, and serendipitous encounters. However, while spaces such as these can place people from diverse backgrounds and groups in close proximity, it is important not to overstate their effectiveness in helping people negotiate difference (Wise; Noble "Cosmopolitan Habits"; Priest et al.; Valentine "Living"). This is the case because urban public spaces can carry a reverse side to the provision of proximity. They are often “spaces of transit with very little contact between strangers” (Amin "Ethnicity" 967). As such, urban public spaces do not naturally serve our need to negotiate our everyday encounters with others (Amin and Thrift; Amin, Massey, and Thrift; Rosaldo; Amin "Ethnicity").This illuminates the need to rethink our everyday public spaces and start to unsettle and shift how some spaces act to perpetuate negative and habitual socio-spatial norms which encourage avoidance rather than provide spaces to contest inequality and inequity (Alexander and Tredoux; Durrheim et al.; Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon and Durrheim; Wise). Participants at Human Libraries demonstrate that they recognise this when they explain that they do not feel able to approach and speak with people who are different in everyday spaces such as the street, public transport and shops. They point out that they feel that socio-spatial norms dictate that it is rude, impolite or intrusive to approach strangers and people who are different in public spaces and to begin a conversation, especially about difference (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"). Examples such as this signal how everyday urban spaces embody socio-spatial norms and practices that impede people’s capacity to engage in everyday acts that protest the marginalisation of difference. This clarifies why “even in the most carefully designed and inclusive spaces, the marginalised and the prejudiced stay away” (Amin "Ethnicity" 968). This alerts us to the need to better appreciate what occurs in other everyday spaces in which people associate even more closely.Spaces and the MicropublicOther everyday spaces in which people spend a significant amount of time are spaces of association, referred to as micropublics (Amin "Ethnicity"; Noble "Cosmopolitan Habits"). They include those places in which we work, study, play sports, and recreate. Micropublics function as spaces of habitual engagement, interdependence and “prosaic negotiations” (Amin "Ethnicity" 969). For example, we attend our place of work on a daily basis which requires us to communicate and interact with our colleagues as well as navigate other forms of elementary social etiquette. In this way, micropublics often bring people from diverse backgrounds and identity groups together in spaces that require them to interact with people who are different to themselves. In practice, however, the contact people undertake in their micropublics tends to be illusory and includes practices of informal segregation (Dixon and Durrheim; Alexander and Tredoux; Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux). This highlights that “co-presence and collaboration are two very different things” and that micropublics do not immediately serve as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference (Amin Land 59).Participants at Human Libraries share experiences taken from their own work places and schools and suggest that the codes of civility that are enforced within these micropublics make it difficult, if not impossible, to engage in certain conversations. For example, Readers at Human Libraries disclose that they do not feel comfortable discussing issues of physical impairment or mental illness with colleagues who live with disability and mental illness. Similarly, high school students explain that they feel unable to discuss what it means to be gay, lesbian or bisexual with their fellow-students who identity as LGBTQI (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"). Examples such as these demonstrate how micropublics embody “degrees and modalities of familiarity and strangeness” (Noble "Strange Familiarities" 33) and that even though they may embody degrees of collaboration and contribute to a shift in the way people develop various forms of familiarity, they do not naturally lend themselves to protesting the way in which codes of civility camouflage disrespect for difference. These experiences alert us to the way that our everyday spaces and the norms attached to them contribute to defining what it means to be and to belong.Spaces and BeingPeople’s experiences of marginalisation in public spaces illuminates how people’s freedom to be in particular spaces and their being – their humanity – are intimately connected. This happens as people who are made to feel that they should not be in a space are sent the message that they do not have the right to be at all (Noble and Poynting). Valentine ("Prejudice" 531) explains how this is demonstrated by the way some people speak about other people who are different in relation to public and private spaces:Individuals stated that they believed in individual freedom and were not prejudiced against minority groups and yet saw no contradiction in then expressing hostility towards seeing lesbians and gay men kissing on the street, or women wearing the hijab in their neighbourhood or feeling uncomfortable at the sight of a disabled person in public or being inconvenienced by disabled access provisions.This response reveals how some people frame acceptance of minority groups using the criteria of invisibility and how spatial norms define “appropriate embodied ways of being in public space” (Valentine "Prejudice" 532). This exemplifies how some people regard it as tolerable for minority groups to express their difference at home but not in public because this would be considered as imposing “their way of life” upon majority people, thus transgressing spatial norms about appropriate embodied ways of being in public spaces.People who participate at Human Libraries as Readers illustrate this dynamic when they share how, during the course of their everyday lives, they have come in contact with people with disabilities or met people who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender and have recognised negative feelings within themselves such as discomfort, embarrassment, or have refused to recognise a person’s authentic identity. They also admit to hiding these feelings in public but expressing them once they return home (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"; Kudo et al.). Similarly, people who volunteer as Human Books speak about their experiences of being in public spaces and feeling unsafe or the target of negative treatment. For example, Human Books who identify as gay comment that they need to do a “safety check” before showing signs of physical affection in public; Human Books whose physical appearance does not align with social constructs of gender relate that they have been banned from using public toilets; and Human Books with eating disorders speak about being labelled as “crazy” (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"; Watson "Being a Human Book"). Behaviours such as these demonstrate how people who are different are defined and treated as lesser beings in public spaces and are relegated to segregated micropublics such as their homes as well as groups and clubs dedicated to particular minorities.Conclusion: Rethinking Our SpacesThe above discussion includes a number of findings that are informative when thinking about how our everyday spaces might act as sites for protesting the marginalisation of difference. The following offers a concluding discussion about how we might approach such a project, paying particular attention to what we can learn from the Human Library.Firstly, Human Libraries exemplify the need to develop sites that protest the way in which our everyday public spaces do not naturally serve our need to negotiate our everyday encounter with difference (Noble and Poynting; Amin and Thrift; Amin Strangers; Priest et al.). Readers indicate that Human Libraries are spaces that make it possible for them to meet people they don’t feel able to approach in other everyday public spaces. As such, Human Libraries illuminate the importance of developing sites that protest social and spatial norms by enabling “encounter between strangers” (Amin "Ethnicity" 967).Secondly, Human Libraries protest the space of the micropublic as sites that are illusory, superficial, and bearers of informal segregation (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon, Tredoux and Clack; Alexander and Tredoux; Priest et al.; Thomas; Dandy and Pe-Pua; Dixon and Durrheim; Durrheim et al.). They achieve this by being sites in which no topic or question is taboo and that welcome and value respectful conversations about difference. Readers are able to speak to Human Books about differences such as what it is like to live with physical impairment, to be lesbian and/or to be an immigrant or a refugee. Their conversations are much deeper than the superficial conversations they feel restricted to within the confines of their everyday micropublics which enables them to protest codes of civility that render conversations about the marginalisation of difference as unacceptable (Watson "'You Shouldn't Have to Suffer'"; Watson "Being a Human Book").Thirdly, Human Libraries provide sites that protest the way in which other spaces define people who are different as lesser beings because Human Libraries are spaces in which every person has the right to be their authentic self. They are spaces that make it possible for people to be 'who we are’ by authentically being ‘how we are’ (Stammers 164-165). They shed a light on the way that a person’s being is sometimes distorted by how they experience being in a particular space and in doing so protest spatial norms that divide, marginalise and diminish people by marginalising them via the criteria of invisibility (Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux; Dixon and Durrheim; Thomas). For this reason, Human Libraries can be regarded as safe spaces to meet people who are different and bring people from the margins of society to its centre as sites that protest the marginalisation of difference.ReferencesAbergel, Ronni, et al. Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover? The Living Library Organiser's Guide. Budapest: Council of Europe 2005.Alexander, Lameez, and Colin Tredoux. "The Spaces between Us: A Spatial Analysis of Informal Segregation at a South African University." Journal of Social Issues 66.2 (2010): 367-86.Amin, Ash. "Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity." Environment and Planning A 34.6 (2002): 959-80.———. Land of Strangers. 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Introduction Since at least the work of van Gennep in the early 1900s, anthropologists have recognised that borders and thresholds are crucial in understanding human behavior and culture. But particularly in the past few decades, the study of borders has moved from the margins of social inquiry to the centre. At the same time, fashion (Entwistle), including clothing and skin (Bille), have emerged as crucial to understanding the human condition. In this article, we draw on and expand this literature on borders and fashion to demonstrate that the way Indonesians fashion and display their body reflects larger changes in attitudes about morality and gender. And in this, borders and thresholds are crucial. In order to make this argument, we consider three case studies from Indonesia. First, we discuss the requirement that policewomen submit to a virginity test, which takes the form of a hymen inspection. Then, we look at the successful campaign by policewomen to be able to wear the Islamic veil. Finally, we consider reports of Makassar policewomen who attempt to turn young people into exemplary citizens and traffic 'ambassadors' by using downtown crosswalks as a catwalk. In each of these three cases, fashioned borders and thresholds play prominent roles in determining the expression of morality, particularly in relation to gender roles. Fashion, Thresholds, and Borders There was once a time when social scientists tended to view clothes and other forms of adornment as "frivolous" or trivial (Entwistle 14; 18). Over the past few decades, however, fashion has emerged as a serious study within the social sciences. Writers have, for example, demonstrated how fashion is closely tied up with identity and capitalism (King and Winarnita). And although fashion used to be envisaged as emerging from London, New York, Paris, Milan, and other Western locations, scholars are increasingly recognising the importance of Asia in fashion studies. Whether the haute couture and cosplay in Tokyo or 'traditional' weaving of materials in Indonesia, studying fashion and clothes provides crucial insight into the cultures and societies of Asia (King and Winarnita). To contribute to this burgeoning area of research in Asian fashion, we draw on the anthropological classics, in particular, the concept of threshold. Every time we walk through a doorway, gate, or cross a line, we cross a threshold. But what classic anthropology shows us is that crossing certain thresholds changes our social status. This changing particularly occurs in the context of ritual. For example, walking onto a stage, a person becomes a performer or actor. Traditionally a groom carries his bride through the door, symbolising the transition to husband and wife (Douglas 115). In this article, we apply this idea that crossing thresholds is associated with transitioning social statuses (Douglas; Turner; van Gennep). To do this, we first establish a connection between national and personal borders. We argue that skin and clothes have a cultural function in addition to their practical functions. Typically, skin is imagined as a kind of social border and clothes provide a buffer zone. But to make this case, we first need to elaborate how we understand national borders. In the traditional kingdoms of Southeast Asia, borders were largely imperceptible or non-existent. Power was thought to radiate out from the ruler, through the capital, and into the surrounding areas. As it emanated from this 'exemplary centre', power was thought to weaken (Geertz 222-229). Rather than an area of land, a kingdom was thought to be a group of people (Tambiah 516). In this context, borders were irrelevant. But as in other parts of the world, in the era of nations, the situation has entirely changed in modern Indonesia. In a simple sense, our current global legal system is created out of international borders. These borders are, first and foremost, imagined lines that separate the area belonging to one nation-state from another. Borders are for the most part simply drawn on maps, explained by reference to latitude, longitude, and other features of the landscape. But, obviously, borders exist outside the imagination and on maps. They have significance in international law, in separating one jurisdiction from another. Usually, national borders can only be legally crossed with appropriate documentation and legal status. In extreme cases, crossing another nation's border can be a cause for war; but the difficulty in determining borders in practice means both sides may debate over whether a border was actually crossed. Where this possibility exists, sometimes the imagined lines are marked on the actual earth by fences, walls, etc. To protect borders, buffer zones are sometimes created. The most famous buffer zone is the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ, which runs along North Korea's border with South Korea. As no peace treaty has been signed between these two nations, they are technically still at war. Hostility is intense, but armed conflict has, for the most part, ceased. The buffer helps both sides maintain this cessation by enabling them to distinguish between an unintentional infringement and a genuine invasion. All this practical significance of borders and buffer zones is obvious. But borders become even more fascinating when we look beyond their 'practical' significance. Borders have ritual as well as practical importance. Like the flag, the nation's borders have meaning. They also have moral implications. Borders have become an issue of almost fanatical or zealous significance. The 2015 footage of a female Hungarian reporter physically attacking asylum seekers who crossed the border into her nation indicates that she was not just upset with their legal status; presumably she does not physically attack people breaking other laws (BBC News). Similarly the border vigilantes, volunteers who 'protect' the southern borders of the USA against what they see as drug cartels, apparently take no action against white-collar criminals in the cities of the USA. For the Hungarian reporter and the border vigilantes, the border is a threshold to be protected at all costs and those who cross it without proper documentation and process are more than just law breakers; they are moral transgressors, possibly even equivalent to filth. So much for border crossing. What about the borders themselves? As mentioned, fences, walls, and other markers are built to make the imagined line tangible. But some borders go well beyond that. Borders are also adorned or fashioned. For instance, the border between North and South Korea serves as a site where national sovereignty and legitimacy are emphasised, defended, and contested. It is at this buffer zone that these two nations look at each other and showcase to the other what is ideally contained within their own respective national borders. But it is not just national states which have buffer zones and borders with deep significance in the modern period; our own clothes and skin possess a similar moral significance. Why are clothes so important? Of course, like national borders, clothes have practical and functional use. Clothes keep us warm, dry, and protected from the sun and other elements. In addition to this practical use, clothes are heavily imbued with significance. Clothes are a way to fashion the body. They define our various identities including gender, class, etc. Clothes also signify morality and modesty (Leach 152). But where does this morality regarding clothing come from? Clothing is a site where state, religious, and familial control is played out. Just like the DMZ, our bodies are aestheticised with adornments, accoutrements, and decorations, and they are imbued with strong symbolic significance in attempts to reveal what constitutes the enclosed. Just like the DMZ, our clothing or lack thereof is considered constitutive of the nation. Because clothes play a role akin to geo-political borders, clothes are our DMZ; they mark us as good citizens. Whether we wear gang colours or a cross on our necklace, they can show us as belonging to something powerful, protective, and worth belonging to. They also show others that they do not belong. In relation to this, perhaps it is necessary to mention one cultural aspect of clothing. This is the importance, in the modern Indonesian nation, of appearing rapih. Rapih typically means clean, tidy, and well-groomed. The ripped and dirty jeans, old T-shirts, unshaven, unkempt hair, which has, at times, been mainstream fashion in other parts of the world, is typically viewed negatively in Indonesia, where wearing 'appropriate' clothing has been tied up with the nationalist project. For instance, as a primary school student in Indonesia, Winarnita was taught Pendidikan Moral Pancasila (Pancasila Moral Education). Named after the Pancasila, the guiding principles of the Indonesian nation, this class is also known as "PMP". It provided instruction in how to be a good national citizen. Crucially, this included deportment. The importance of being well dressed and rapih was stressed. In sum, like national borders, clothes are much more than their practical significance and practical use. This analysis can be extended by looking at skin. The practical significance of skin cannot be overstated; it is crucial to survival. But that does not preclude the possibility that humans—being the prolifically creative and meaning-making animals that we are—can make skin meaningful. Everyday racism, for instance, is primarily enabled by people making skin colour meaningful. And although skin is not optional, we fashion it into borders that define who we are, such as through tattoos, by piercing, accessorising, and through various forms of body modification (from body building to genital modification). Thresholds are also important in understanding skin. In a modern Indonesian context, when a penis crosses a woman's hymen her ritual status changes; she is no longer a virgin maiden (gadis) or virgin (perawan). If we apply the analogy of borders to the hymen, we could think of it as a checkpoint or border crossing. At a national border crossing, only people with correct credentials (for instance, passport holders with visas) can legally cross and only at certain times (not on public holidays or only from 9-5). At a hymen, only people with the correct status, namely one's husband, can morally cross. The checkpoint is a crucial reminder of the nation state and citizen scheme. The hymen is a crucial reminder of heteronormative standards. Crucial to understanding Indonesian notions of skin is the idea of aurat (Bennett 2007; Parker 2008). This term refers to parts of the body that should be covered. Or it could be said that aurat refers to 'intimate parts' of the body, if we understand that different parts of the body are considered intimate in Indonesian cultures. Indonesians tend to describe the aurat as those body parts that arouse feelings of sexual attraction or embarrassment in others. The concept tends to have Arabic and Islamic associations in Indonesia. Accordingly, for many Muslims, it means that women, once they appear sexually mature, should cover their hair, neck, and cleavage, and other areas that might arouse sexual attraction. These need to be covered when they leave their house, when they are viewed by people outside of the immediate nuclear family (muhrim). For men, it means they should be covered from their stomach to their knees. However, different Islamic scholars and preachers give different interpretations about what the aurat includes, with some opining that the entire female body with the exception of hands and face needs to be covered. That said, the general disposition or habitus of using clothes to cover is also found among non-Muslims in Indonesia. Accordingly, Catholics, Protestants, and Hindus also tend to cover their legs and cleavage, and so on, more than would commonly be found in Western countries. Having outlined the literature and cultural context, we now turn to our case studies. The Veil and Indonesian Policewomen Our first case study focusses on Indonesian police. Aside from a practical significance in law enforcement, police also have symbolic importance. There is an ideal that police should set and enforce standards for exemplary behaviour. Despite this, the Indonesia police have an image problem, being seen as highly corrupt (Davies, Stone, & Buttle). This is where policewomen fit in. The female constabulary are thought to be capable of morally improving the police force and the nation. Additionally, Indonesian policewomen are believed to be needed in situations of family violence, for instance, and to bring a sensitive and humane approach. The moral significance of Indonesia's policewomen shows clearly through issues of their clothing, in particular, the veil. In 2005, it became illegal for Indonesian policewomen to wear the veil on duty. Various reasons were given for this ban. These included that police should present a secular image, showcasing a modern and progressive nation. But this was one border contest where policewomen were able to successfully fight back; in 2013, they won the right to wear the veil on duty. The arguments espoused by both sides during this debate were reflective of geo-political border disputes, and protagonists deployed words such as "sovereignty", "human rights", and "religious autonomy". But in the end it was the policewomen's narrative that best convinced the government that they had a right to wear the veil on duty. Possibly this is because by 2013 many politicians and policymakers wanted to present Indonesia as a pious nation and having policewomen able to express their religion – and the veil being imbued with sentiments of honesty and dedication – fitted in with this larger national image. In contrast, policewomen have been unsuccessful in efforts to ban so called virginity testing (discussed below). Indonesian Policewomen Need to Be Attractive But veils are not the only bodily border that can be packed around language used to describe a DMZ. Policewomen's physical appearance, and specifically facial appearance and make-up, are discussed in similar terms. As such another border that policewomen must present in a particular (i.e. beautiful) way is their appearance. As part of the selection process, women police candidates must be judged by a mostly male panel as being pretty. They have to be a certain height and weight, and bust measurements are taken. The image of the policewoman is tall, slim, and beautiful, with a veil or with regulation cut and coiffed hair. Recognising the 'importance' of beauty for policewomen, they are given a monthly allowance precisely to buy make-up. Such is the status of policewomen that entry is highly competitive. And those who make the cut accrue many benefits. One of these benefits can be celebrity status, and it is not unusual for some policewomen to have over 100,000 Instagram followers. This celebrity status has led one police official to publicly state that women should not join the police force thinking it is a shortcut to celebrity status (Davies). So just like a nation trying to present its best self, Indonesia is imagined in the image of its policewomen. Policewomen feel pride in being selected for this position even when feeling vexed about these barriers to getting selected (Davies). Another barrier to selection is discussed in the next case study. Virginity Testing of Policewomen Our second case study relates to the necessity that female police recruits be virgins. Since 1965, policewomen recruits have been required to undergo internal examinations to ensure that their hymen is supposedly intact. Glossed as 'virginity' tests this procedure involves a two-finger examination by a health professional. Protests against the practice have been voiced by Human Rights Watch and others (Human Rights Watch). Pledges have also been made that the practice will be removed. But to date the procedure is still performed, although there are currently moves to have it banned within the armed forces. Hymens are more of a skin border than a clothing border such as that formed by uniforms or veils, but they operate in similar ways. The ‘feelable’ hymen marks an unmarried woman as moral. New women police recruits must be unmarried and therefore virgins. Actually, the hymen is not a taut skin border, but rather a loose connection of overlapping tissue and in this sense a hymen is not something one can lose. But the hymen is used as a proxy to determine a woman’s value. Hymen border control gives one a moral edge. A hymen supposedly measures a woman’s ability to protect herself, like any fortified geo-political border. Protecting one’s own borders gives the suggestion that one is able to protect others. A policewoman who can protect her bodily borders can protect those of others. Outsiders may wonder what being attractive, modest, but not too modest has to do with police work. And some (but by no means all) Indonesian policewomen wondered the same thing too. Indeed, some policewomen Davies interviewed in the 2010s were against this practice, but many staunchly supported it. They had successfully passed this rite of passage and therefore felt a common bond with other new recruits who had also gone through this procedure. Typically rites of passage, and especially the accompanying humiliation and abuse, engender a strong sense of solidarity among those who have passed through them. The virginity test seems to have operated in a similar way. Policewomen and the 'Citayam' Street Fashion Our third case study is an analysis of a short and otherwise unremarkable TV news report about policewomen parading across a crosswalk in a remote regional city. To understand why, we need to turn to "Citayam Fashion Week", a youth social movement which has developed around a road crossing in downtown Jakarta. Social movements like this are difficult to pin down, but it seems that a central aspect has been young fashionistas using a zebra crossing on a busy Jakarta street as an impromptu catwalk to strut across, be seen, and photographed. These youths are referred to in one article as "Jakarta's budget fashionistas" (Saraswati). The movement is understood in social media and traditional media sources as expressing 'street fashion'. Social media has been central to this movement. The youths have posted photos and videos of themselves crossing the road on social media. Some of these young fashionistas posted interviews with each other on TikTok. Some of the interviews went viral in June 2022 (Saraswati). So where does the name "Citayam Fashion Week" come from? Citayam is an outer area of Jakarta, which is a long way from from the wealthy central district where the young fashionistas congregate. But "Citayam" does not mean that the youths are all thought to come from that area. Instead the idea is that they could be from any poorer outer areas around the capital and have bussed or trained into town. The crosswalk they strut across is near the transport hub next to a central train station. The English-language "Fashion Week" is a tongue-in-cheek label mocking the haute couture fashion weeks around the world – events which, due to a wealth and class gap, are closed off to these teens. Strutting on the crosswalk is not limited to a single 'week' but it is an ongoing activity. The movement has spread to other parts of Indonesia, with youth parading across cross walks in other urban centres. Citayam Fashion Week became one of the major Indonesian public issues of 2022. Reaction was mixed. Some pointed to the unique street style and attitude, act, and language of the young fashionistas, some of whom became minor celebrities. The "Citayam Fashion Week" idea was also picked up by mainstream media, attracting celebrities, models, content creators, politicians and other people in the public eye. Some government voices also welcomed the social movement as promoting tourism and the creative industry. Others voiced disapproval at the youth. Their clothes were disparaged as 'tacky', reflecting deep divides in class and income in modern Jakarta. Some officials noted that they are a nuisance because they create traffic jams and loitering. Criticism also had a moral angle, in particular with commentators focused on male teens wearing feminine attire (Saraswati). Social scientists such as Oki Rahadianto (Souisa & Salim) and Saraswati see this as an expression of youth agency. These authors particularly highlight the class origins of the Citayam fashionistas being mostly from poorer outer suburbs. Their fashion displays are seen to be a way of reclaiming space for the youth in the urban landscape. Furthermore, the youths are expressing their own and unique version of youth culture. We can use the idea of threshold to provide unique insight into this phenomenon in the simple sense that the crosswalk connects one side of the road to the other. But the youth use it for something far more significant than this simple practical purpose. What is perceived to be happening is that some of the youth, who after all are in the process of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, use the crosswalk to publicly express their transition to non-normative gender and sexual identities; indeed, some of them have also transitioned to become mini celebrities in the process. Images of 'Citayam' portray young males adorned in makeup and clothes that are not identifiably masculine. They appear to be crossing gender boundaries. Other images show the distinct street fashion of these youth of exposed skin through crop tops (short tops) that show the belly, clothes with cut-out sections on various parts of the body, and ripped jeans. In a way, these youth are transgressing the taboo against exposing too much skin in public. One video is particularly interesting in light of the approach we are taking in this article as it comes from Makassar, the capital of one of Indonesia's outlying regions. "The Citayam Fashion Week phenomenon spreads to Makassar; young people become traffic (lalu lintas) ambassadors" (Kompas TV) is a news report about policewomen getting involved with young people using a crosswalk to parade their fashion. At first glance the Citayam Fashion Week portrayed in Makassar, a small city in an outlying province, is tiny compared to the scale of the movement in Jakarta. The news report shows half a dozen young males in feminine clothing and makeup. Aside from several cars in the background, there is no observable traffic that the process seems to interrupt. The news report portrays several Indonesian policewomen, all veiled, assisting and accompanying the young fashionistas. The reporter explains that the policewomen go 'hand in hand' (menggandeng) with the fashionistas. The police attempt to harness the creative energy of the youth and turn them into traffic ambassadors (duta lalu lintas). Perhaps it is going too far to state, but the term for traffic here, lalu lintas ("lalu" means to pass by or pass through, and "lintas" means "to cross"), implies that the police are assisting them in crossing thresholds. In any case, from the perspective we have adopted in this chapter, Citayam Fashion Week can be analysed in terms of thresholds as a literal road crossing turned into a place where youth can cross over gender norms and class barriers. The policewomen, with their soft, feminine abilities, attempt to transform them into exemplary citizens. Discussion: Morality, Skin, and Borders In this article, we have actually passed over two apparent contradictions in Indonesian society. In the early 2000s, Indonesian policewomen recruits were required to prove their modesty by passing a virginity test in which their hymen was inspected. Yet, at the same time they needed to be attractive. And, moreover, they were not allowed to wear the Muslim veil. They had to be modest and protect themselves from male lust but also good-looking and visible to others. The other contradiction relates to a single crosswalk or zebra crossing in downtown Jakarta, Indonesia's capital city, in 2022. Instead of using this zebra crossing simply as a place to cross the road, some youths turned it to their own ends as an impromptu 'catwalk' and posted images of their fashion on Instagram. A kind of social movement has emerged whereby Indonesian youth are fashioning their identity that contravenes gender expectations. In an inconsequential news report on the Citayam Fashion Week in Makassar, policewomen were portrayed as co-opting and redirecting the movement into an instructional opportunity in orderly road crossing. The youths could thereby transformed into good citizens. Although the two phenomena – attractive modest police virgins and a crosswalk that became a catwalk – might seem distinct, underlying the paradoxes are similar issues which can be teased out by analysing them in terms of morality, gender, and clothing in relation to borders, buffer zones, and thresholds. Veils, hymens, clothes, make-up are all politically positioned as borders worth fighting for, as necessary borders. While some border disputes can be won (such as policewomen winning the right to veil on duty, or disrupting traffic by parading one's gender-bending fashion), others are either not challenged or unsuccessfully challenged (such as ending virginity tests). These borders of moral encounter enable and provoke various responses: the ban on veiling for Indonesian policewomen was something to challenge as it undermined women’s moral position and stopped their expression of piety – things their nation wanted them to be able to do. But fighting to stop virginity testing was not permissible because even suggesting a contestation implies immorality. Only the immoral could want to get rid of virginity tests. The Citayam Fashion Week presented potentially immoral youths who corrupt national values, but with the help of policewomen, literally and figuratively holding their hand, they could be transformed into worthwhile citizens. National values were at stake in clothing and skin. Conclusion Borders and buffer zone are crucial to a nation's image of itself; whether in the geographical shape of one's country, or in clothes and skin. Douglas suggests that the human experience of boundaries can symbolise society. If she is correct, Indonesian nationalist ideas about clothing, skin, and even hymens shape how Indonesians understand their own nation. Through the three case studies we argued firstly for the importance of analysing the fashioning of the body not only as a form of border maintenance, but as truly at the centre of understanding national morality in Indonesia. Secondly, the national border may also be a way to remake the individual. People see themselves in the 'shape' of their country. As Bille stated "like skin, borders are a protective integument as well as a surface of inscription. Like the body, the nation is skin deep" (71). Thresholds are just as they imply. Passing through a threshold, we cross over one side of the border. We can potentially occupy an in-between status in, for instance, demilitarised zones. Or we can continue on to the other side. To go over a threshold such as becoming a policewoman, a teenager, a fashionista, and a mini celebrity, a good citizen can be constituted through re-fashioning the body. Fashioning one's body can be done through adorning skin with makeup or clothes, covering or revealing the skin, including particular parts of the body deemed sacred, such as the aurat, or by maintaining a special type of skin such as the hymen. The skin that is re-fashioned thus becomes a site of border contention that we argue define not only personal but national identity. Acknowledgment This article was first presented by Sharyn Graham Davies as a plenary address on 24 November 2021 as part of the Women in Asia conference. References BBC News. "Hungarian Camerawoman Who Kicked Refugees Charged." 8 Sep. 2016. 3 Oct 2022 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37304489>. Bennett, Linda Rae. 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