Re-thinking gender: The possibility of queer feminism in Turkey

Being interdisciplinary study fields, feminism and queer theory have held certain differences in challenging the hegemonic sex and gender perception, although on the surface, they have pursued overlapping resistance strategies towards the oppressive power systems throughout the historical process. Emerging from these differences or states of being not overlapping, queer feminism has opened new research doors with its critique of sex/gender and identity politics. While expounding the possibility of queer feminism in Turkey, with this research, it is aimed to reveal whether queer feminism is a more disruptive and effective movement ground in transforming the mainstream gender approach of the feminist movement, in our rethinking of gender and in moving from oppression to emancipation by subverting cisnormative power domains when compared to former gender discourses. In this context, in-depth interviews were conducted with activists who took part in feminist movements and the LGBTQ+ movement in Izmir. As a result of these interviews, it is revealed that the feminist movement and LGBTQ+ movement fail to cooperate in practice, and also feminist movement is based on the ground of heteropatriarchy's gender binary in its gender perception and therefore questions the trans subjects' positions within the movement in a political sense. It has come to a conclusion that today's feminist movement is unable to feed sufficiently on transfeminism and queer theory, and therefore reinforcing cisnormative heteropatriarchy's gender view.