GoSSIP

Women and femininity have a troubled relationship with secrecy. Historically and yet still today, women are considered poor and/or dangerous secret-keepers – the gossip, the witch, and the honey trap remain common tropes that circulate widely.  Yet, paradoxically, women have also been burdened with the secrets of those around them, whether husbands, families or employers, often reproducing their role as subordinate and passive listeners, silent and uncomplaining, especially in keeping with roles as ‘honour-keepers’.  Women also have underexplored histories as improbable state ‘secret agents’ and have used secrecy as resistance, coming together to plan, strategize and to effect change.

• women’s rights activists have returned to the use of ‘underground’ networks to support the delivery of safe, yet now illegal, abortions.
• In Afghanistan, young women gather in secret to learn, despite government prohibitions.
• Globally, women (and men) continue to step forward to challenge the powerful perpetrators of sexual violence and the institutions whose wilful ignorance perpetuated these abuses as ‘open secrets’ for so many years.
• At the same time, trans women and those queered must constantly negotiate the challenges of the interplay of secrecy and ignorance within oppressive sexual and gender orders.

In other words, secrecy and ignorance as social practices have many-sided implications for how gender and sexuality are (re)constructed, yet this conceptual terrain is still to be fully mapped, historically and in the present. This project therefore explores how secrecy and ignorance, are entangled with gender and sexuality: the Gender, Sexuality, Secrecy and Ignorance Project.