As part of launching the Queer Matters in Criminology special issue of Crime Media Culture, I caught up with Dr Tully O’Neill to discuss their co-authored article, “Be gay, do criminology?”. Drawing on the now-iconic queer anarchist phrase “be gay, do crime,” O’Neill and their colleagues offer a playful yet provocative reworking of the slogan to reflect on what it means to undertake queer research in criminology. Their piece brings together the personal, political, and intellectual stakes of being queer scholars analysing anti-queer violence, highlighting the tensions, joys, and challenges that shape such work. In this Q&A, Tully reflects on the title, the process of writing collaboratively, and the broader conversations they hope the paper will spark within the discipline.
The special issue launched has been supported by the ANZSOC Local Event Support Scheme.
The title of your paper is really striking, can you talk us through it? What does “Be gay, do criminology?” capture about your argument?
The title of our paper draws from the popular and now heavily memeified phrase “be gay, do crime,” which originated in queer anarchist movements. We expand on the phrase a bit in the introduction to the article. We chose “be gay, do criminology?” as a playful starting point, and as we wrote the paper and reflected on our personal relationships to the discipline, it actually became more of a provocation—one that we felt framed the content of the article quite well.
In terms of what the article is about, we initially approached it as a methodological piece. We wanted to collectively reflect on our experiences as queer researchers analysing a large sample of media articles representing anti-queer violence, and what it was like to do so within a discipline that, broadly speaking, tends to disregard the personal or subjective nature of research. Meanwhile, most (if not all) queer criminologists have direct personal investments in queer communities—it’s one of the things that draws us to the work. The final article ended up being theoretical as well, arguing that this kind of queer research, with its capacity to interconnect scholarly and personal investments, holds significant value for the broader discipline.
How does your work reflect on the personal, political, and intellectual stakes of doing queer criminology?
Maybe it’s easiest to begin with the personal here—and in doing so, I’ll probably also touch on the political and intellectual. Ultimately, what we’re advocating for in this paper is the idea that, at least for us, these stakes are inextricably linked, and deeply tied to queer identity, community, and experience.
Initially, I wanted us to write an article that explored our personal reflections on the research through a reflexive exercise. The research experience itself was quite unique—we embarked on an unfunded passion project, completing it slowly while juggling many other commitments. We met up every week and coded collectively over about two years, during a time when we were all variously and precariously employed. As three early career queer scholars with personal relationships as well, these coding meetings weren’t just “work”—they also carried a sense of levity and lightness, despite the heavy content we were analysing.
There was a real juxtaposition: while reading violent and impactful representations of harm against our communities, we were also experiencing the research process in a queer way—bringing in humour, thinking about circulating affects, and engaging with the data in a deeply embodied and relational way.
When we reflected collectively on the experience, we realised we shared views about the challenges of being queer researchers studying anti-queer violence. These affective and personal investments are often front and centre in queer criminology. At the same time, we maintained a political and critical gaze in our analysis. For example, we were repeatedly alienated by the carceral investments (to borrow from Lamble, 2012) evident in many of the LGBTQ community publications we analysed. This highlighted the inextricability of the personal and intellectual—we were both immersed in the research affectively and compelled to analyse and politicise it.
As we wrote the article, we found a way to feel through this tension and highlight how our alienation, unease, joy, and humour were all part of a research process that brought together the personal, political, and intellectual. I think the final article manages to hold these elements together by exploring relationality and connectedness.
What conversations do you hope your piece will spark within the discipline?
Collectively, we hope this paper won’t be pushed to the side or dismissed as navel-gazing. Unfortunately, that can happen with research areas like feminist and queer criminology, where personal attachments and politics are sometimes disregarded as “bias” rather than recognised for their capacity to stimulate intellectual curiosity and critique.
We also hope the paper can be seen as a methodological contribution—one that encourages criminologists to reflect on the personal, political, and intellectual simultaneously. Even though engaging with these dimensions can be uncomfortable, for us, this paper proved to be both generative and transformative.
