Revisiting "lesbian nationalism": Lesbian activism and agency in Hungary from the 1990s to the illiberal present.

Abstract

Can lesbians speak in Hungarian illiberalism? They can and they do, but they are facing new challenges in a polarized society, with NGOs sanctioned and the issue of LGBTQ+ rights instrumentalized to gain voters' support and oppose Western liberal hegemony. In order to understand the illiberal authoritarian present unfolding in real time, local lesbian scholars and activists are challenged to develop new strategies, which also includes rethinking existing academic concepts on lesbian activism. In this paper, we address and challenge how lesbian activism in post-socialist Hungary was implicated with nationalism and ahistoricism in academic literature still considered relevant today. Drawing on our own historical account as lesbian activists and scholars in Hungary since the 1990s, we argue for an (auto)ethnographic focus on lesbian micro-politics, as it responds seismographically and actively intervenes into the illiberal culture wars.