Outros Corpos Nossos: Other Bodies Of Ours

Sexual and gender minorities have been historically construed as the marginal “others” of dominant society. This experience of “otherness” has been crucially constitutive of LGBTIQ identities, shaping personalities and marking the imaginary boundaries between the community and society at large. In this context, the gendered and sexed body is a terrain in which this otherness is lived, experienced and often subverted. If identity is embodied, mediated through the corporeal, the placement of bodies in space, in the city – where one can go, the place one can call their own – is no simple matter. Rather, it is embedded in the politics of queer visibility and recognition. In spite of adversity, queer people still take to the street, occupy the city, carve a space of their own, a space where they belong. By claiming an identity, a body and a city as “ours”, the LGBTIQ movement, its artists and activists, issue an urgent message of belonging and empowerment. Here, this short concoction of words – Other, Bodies, Ours – incorporates these dimensions of queer experience: the overlapping of otherness and self, the corporeality of identities, and the urgent claim for belonging in a community.