The focus group held in Bologna on 2 October 2005 revolved around the relationships between ‘body’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘precarity’, which are concepts at the heart of the reflections and political agenda of the feminist and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (GLBTQ) movements in Italy.

In sexual harassment law scholarship, it is often argued that the reasonable person standard should give way to a reasonable victim standard. Yet, this latter standard may unintentionally invite homophobic employees to attempt to use a reasonable homophobe standard to charge gay supervisors with harassment merely for being openly gay at work. In response, I argue that we currently act on an unjustifiable distinction whereby we treat sexuality behavior as necessarily sexualized only for GLBTQ behavior. By disallowing this discriminatory (...) treatment, we can preserve the reasonable victim standard and undermine the homophobe's warrantless charges. (shrink)

Here I shine light on the concept of and call for safe space and on the implicit argument that seems to undergird both the concept and the call, complicating and problematizing the taken for granted view of this issue with the goal of revealing a more complex dynamic worthy of interpretive attention when determining educational response. I maintain that the usual justification for safe space covers rather than clarifies the logic of safe space and makes it difficult for an educator (...) to respond to harassment in a constructive and fitting way. I also claim that calls for safe space can only be properly interpreted—and responded to—when the link between fear and safety is uncovered and deconstructed. In the process, I note that the assumption of “safety” as a “positive condition” for education is problematic and warrants careful consideration. (shrink)