Can the Process of Going Straight be Understood as a Queer Experience?

• In Event: Roundtable: Gender and Crime

Abstract

This article uses queer phenomenology to explore the narratives of (heterosexual) former offenders and drug users. The article plays with the ambiguous notion of ’going straight’; a term used in life-course criminology that refers to the process of desistance and that usually gets linked to heteronormative ideas of “a good life”, which means reaching certain points like employment, marriage and children along the life course. The article does not uncritically address these heteronormative norms and conventions as positive turning points, but views them as (violent) structures of social pressure. I suggest that stories about crime and drug use often are stories about feeling oriented or being at home in the world whereas narratives about going straight are, initially, stories of disorientation and fear. I argue that the narrators cling to heteronormative norms and conventions like family values and reproduction to try to overcome the queer and unsettling experiences of going straight.

Author

• Emy Backlin, Stockholm University