Frontmatter and Editorial

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:

In 2019, Stonewall celebrates its 50th anniversary. While rainbow flags and merchandise fill the streets of cities celebrating Pride all over the world, queer experience remains highly ambiguous, its status complicated. Although the commercialization of the LGBTQ* movement points both to a growing awareness of pluralism in public discourses as well as to economy’s comprehension of diversity’s buying power, it may also represent the mainstream’s grasp on what used to be exclusively queer spaces out of necessity: Pride month has just ended and already Boston’s approved ‘Straight Pride’ is lurking. Scheduled for August 31 (Stock), the event exemplifies only a fraction of heteronormativity’s ongoing reign1 over global social structures, but almost symbolically stands for the rigor with which a privileged majority (here, in terms of gender and sexual identity) continues to take the lion’s share. Normalized identity and behavior is maintained and only challenged temporally when the ‘unusual’ seems more profitable.