As part of launching the Queer Matters in Criminology special issue of Crime Media Culture, I caught up with Dr Ryan Thorneycroft to discuss his contribution, Troubling Queer Criminology’s Normativity. Drawing from a paper first delivered at the Queer Matters in Criminology symposium at La Trobe University in July 2023, Ryan reflects on the risks of reproducing norms within queer criminology, the ambivalent role of normalcy, and the importance of keeping the field radical, self-critical, and responsive to our precarious political moment.
The special issue launched has been supported by the ANZSOC Local Event Support Scheme.
Your title suggests a challenge to queer criminology itself, can you explain what you mean by “troubling queer criminology’s normativity”?
The article stems from a paper I delivered at the Queer Matters in Criminology symposium at La Trobe University in July 2023. I was delighted to be invited, and especially because the conversations were inspired, partly, by resurgent queerphobia and how scholarship and advocacy can best respond to these conditions. The article is part of the special issue published in Crime Media Culture, and the guest editor’s description that there was an ‘ominous backdrop’ to the occasion is particularly apt. Then and now, too—times are indeed troubling.
My contribution really rehearses old ground, but I felt it was something worth saying (again) because it feels like we hadn’t learnt the lesson. Matthew Ball and many others have identified some troubling political orientations associated with ‘queer criminology’: an over-reliance on identity (categories) and identity politics; a failure to adopt coalitional politics; and finally, having very little to say about queer theory’s commitment to anti-normativity. I wanted to re-engage with these ideas, and additionally, to trouble criminology as a discipline, to advocate for a queer(er), radical, and anti-normative politics, and through this, risk falling out with criminology’s dangerous thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours. So, to answer your question, I wanted to trouble queer criminology’s political orientations, including its relationship with criminology itself. More queer theory, less criminology, in a sense.
What risks do you see if queer criminology reproduces the very norms it seeks to resist?
Norms are very difficult to overcome, and for many (or most), they provide roadmaps for our lives (e.g. getting a job, living the good life, fitting in, and so on). Related, Michael Warner famously argued that normalcy is often compulsory. A norm can be stifling but in some contexts it can be lifesaving. Norms are ambivalent and contradictory and have a range of affective attachments, and they can be appealing and oppressive at the same time. The field is also couched within an academy that has its own normative orientations and constraints. Norms are often attached to morality even though there is nothing inherently moral about them. There are moments where we discover the slipperiness between normal and abnormal and find it difficult to parse between them. This is one way of saying that I recognise the path is tricky. So let me just say this: I think there’s a need to question and trouble the taken-for-granted. This should be obvious amidst the innumerable toxicities of the status quo. And for queer criminologists, one critical avenue must be to reckon with criminology and our relationship to it. Finally, I don’t believe it’s enough to ‘add LGBT and stir’ – such actions are political and result in political outcomes, which require considerable critical reflection.
How might your argument push the field to be more radical or self-critical?
I’ve never had any pretensions that my work will do that much. What’s that joke about PhD theses being useful doorstops? I digress. Notwithstanding the central thrust of the article, one of the other points I made is that the field is already pursuing original and radical work that needs to be further celebrated and nourished. I’ve always thought that PhD students and ECR’s push us into new and exciting territory, and we need to support that. Our political moment is precarious, queers are still hated, and a range of pressures lead to the discouragement of research or forms of self-censorship. The Queer Matters in Criminology symposium, and the special issue, may be about forming an intimate public: sharing a collective space about ‘not being defeated by what is overwhelming’ (Berlant 2011: 227). We are surrounded by toxicities that wear and tear, but we persist. I think the final sentence of the special issue’s introduction summed it up best: ‘[t]his special issue shows that queer and trans people continue to carve out spaces of connection, safety, and collective liberation—as we always have’ (Mitchell et al. 2025: 12; italics added for emphasis).
