LGBT Activist Politics and Intersectionality in Croatia and Serbia An introduction

In this chapter we engage with the work on intersectionality by (black) feminists and post-colonial scholars and activists to examine the extent to which this concept can help us to better understand the matrix of oppression that LGBT people are exposed to in the post-war, “perennially transitional” socio-political context of Croatia and Serbia. By pointing to the numerous challenges faced by still rather fragile LGBT activist initiatives, we explore how gender, sexuality, class and other aspects of social and geographical locations within the post-Yugoslav space reflect and reproduce power disparities that stem from a deeply patriarchal social structure. We pay particular attention to the mechanisms and processes through which emancipatory struggles in highly precarious circumstances—characterised by competition for resources and professionalisation pressures—result in exclusionary practices and disable articulation of wider coalitional politics and solidarity building. In the second section of the chapter, we explain the structure of the volume and summarise the arguments of the ensuing contributions.