Ordinary in Brighton?: LGBT, activisms and the city

Ordinary in Brighton? offers the first large scale examination of the impact of the UK equalities legislation on lesbian, gay, bi- and trans (LGBT) people themselves and the effects of these changes on the nature of LGBT political activism. Using the participatory research project, Count Me In Too, this book investigates the material issues of social/spatial injustice that were pertinent for some, but not all, LGBT people, and activisms that worked with/within through partnership working. Arguing that place is central to the enactment of sexual/gendered citizenships, Ordinary in Brighton? explores the unevenly felt consequences of assimilation and inclusion in a city that was compelled to provide a place (literally and figuratively) for LGBT people. With its long history as a favoured location of LGBT people, in Brighton certain sexual and gender dissidents supposedly became ordinary rather than exceptional and transgressive. Brighton itself is understood to be exceptional, and exploring this specific location provides insights into how place operates as constitutive of everyday lives. Despite the common trope that there is much written about ‘gay Brighton’, there is in fact very little academic or popular literature published about this city. The possibilities of legislative change and urban inclusivities enabled some LGBT people to live ordinary lives, but this potential existed in tension with normalisations and exclusions. Alongside the necessary critiques, Ordinary in Brighton? asks for a conceptualisation the creative and co-operative possibilities of ordinariness. The book concludes by differentiating the exclusionary ideals of normalisation from the possibilities of ordinariness, which has the potential to render a range of people not only in-place, but commonplace.