Guest editorial: Queer troublemakers and intersectional solidarity in times of anti-queer backlash

For decades queering has been frequently applied as “a critical metaphor for studying, theorizing, and potentially interven[ing] in managerial discourse and organizational practice” (Christensen et al., 2025). This application alludes to a strong connection to the practices of queer activist spaces. Such practices of “queering” foreground the experiences of people marginalized based on their gender identity or sexuality or both and therefore focus primarily on “uncover[ing] and troubl[ing] heterosexual and cisgendered assumptions as underlying norms of management, organizations, and society” (Christensen et al., 2025). Thus, a common aim of queer research is to denaturalize dominant institutional, organizational, and social norms; an act of criticality that exposes the contingency of said norms, meaning that existing and interrelated sets of norms could – and maybe should – be changed because there is no inherent necessity to them (Christensen, 2021). In other words, given that gendered and sexual relations are political, norms can be and must be, resisted, contested, and subverted. If for nothing else, paraphrasing Henriksen and Al-Arab (2022), to avoid the queer in us being squeezed out by the embrace of homonormativity (Duggan, 2002). Furthermore, there is a lack of solidarity in intersectional struggles associated with homonationalist discourses (Puar, 2018; Hansen, 2021), from which individual queer people might reap some benefits while the queer community and movement as a whole pay the price–particularly those whose marginalization pertains to racialization, ableism, and other axes of difference in addition to gender and sexuality.

While cis-heteronormativity is indeed repressive to queer people normativity may also be an activist tool that lays claims about what is “correct, good, to be pursued, acceptable, endorsed, or allowed” and, thereby, opening up new futures (Shotwell, 2016, p. 145) - even if certain queer embodiments to the general will of society appear to be future-negating (Edelman, 2004), as evident from recurring debates about the belonging of kink at Pride (see, e.g. Abad-Santos, 2021). For Halberstam (2005, p. 1), disrupting normativity through queer time and space involves that a “ “queer way of life” will encompass subcultural practices, alternative methods of alliance, forms of transgender embodiment, and those forms of representation dedicated to capturing these willfully eccentric modes of being”. Queer activists–intellectuals and artists–imagine different futures, reminding us that we are “not yet” (Halberstam, 2005) there, and call for political imagination in thinking queer resistance anew, as well as eliminating violences, living liveable lives and consciousness-raising.

Intersectional queer solidarity is key to organizing. Interventions including the organization of queer separatist safer spaces as “space-making” (McCartan and Nash, 2022) mobilizes intersectional solidarity, safety and activism. Muñoz (1999, p. 146) writes about the creation of counter-publics which are “communities and relational chains of resistance that contest the dominant public sphere” and involve queers of Color creating minoritarian public spheres which challenge majoritarian public spheres. Decolonial queer feminists have long critiqued colonial, heteronormative and male dominance. The exemplary writing of Anzaldúa's (1987) border thinking is one such critique which calls for decolonizing Western thought which continues to reinforce binary thinking and fails to capture the complexity and fluidity of intersecting marginalized identities, such as those of the Chicana people. Canadians Hunt and Holmes (2015) writing on the importance of allyship, summarize how decolonial queer politics involve queering “White settler colonialism and the colonial gender and sexual categories it relies on—to render it abnormal, to name it and make it visible in order to challenge it” (Riggs, 2010 cited in Hunt and Holmes, 2015, p. 156).

This special issue has created a space for queer troublemakers and killjoy activism in organizational research, remembering the legacies of queer activism and the political roots of queer(ing). Queer activism involves acknowledging the struggles of the community in their resistance, but also making space for queer experiences of joy and waves of intersectional solidarity in times of backlash. While queer and queering research has developed a tendency to disaggregate theory from the activist practices rooted in contextualized lived experiences of queer people (Pullen et al., 2016), the articles housed in this special issue center queer bodies, queer communities, solidarities and lived experiences in different settings. This special issue thus counters the decoupling from sexual and gender politics that has led to a loss of queer subject positions and experiences in work and organization studies (Parker, 2002, see also Harris and Ashcraft, 2023), and present an alternative to the disembodied and apolitical approach to queer(ing) research. The articles when taken together as a special issue make important contributions to queer organizational research through four different approaches.

The first approach taken up in several articles sheds light on affective solidarities in resistance in different ways. For instance, Steyaert's (2025) paper “Ambivalent affects of queer resistance: the Stonewall uprising at the opera” offers an affective analysis of the performance of the opera “Stonewall” at the New York City Opera, which was commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The article makes a compelling argument for affective solidarities claiming that such cultural performances are forms of queer worldmaking, which make it possible to revive affective moments in queer history. Re-experiencing and remembering such events collectively is fundamental, Steyaert suggests, because it offers opportunities to critically inquire into the legacy and future potential of historic instances of queer resistance. The article advances our understanding of how exploring the intersection of troublemaking politics and affective activism can support organizing queer resistance and solidarity. Sterk's (2025) article “‘We just can't afford to be separated on that’ – affective solidarities among university-based lesbian, gay bi and trans volunteers” shows the importance of affect as a perspective through which to examine the university's role in the process of organizing sexuality and gender identity. Sterk explores how LGBT + volunteers in English universities experience and respond to organizational trans-exclusion, highlighting the affective and ambiguous process of being a volunteer. Mobilizing literature on passionate work, affective solidarity, and organizational (dis)comfort, the analysis reveals a productive if ambiguous conjunction of affective solidarity and passionate work. The article highlights oppositions of organizational trans-exclusion, transcending individualistic identitarian politics, into a politics of solidarity beyond simple similarity. The paper “‘Queer renaissance, stakes is high’: queerplatonic love and solidarity as insufferable resistance” by Dominguez et al. (2025), captures affective solidarity by centering affects emerging from queer relationships. Their article investigates how queerplatonic love and practiced solidarity emerged between Trae, a Black American queer cisgender man and Mani, an immigrant genderqueer person from Oaxaca, Mexico. Grounded in feminist epistemology and post-qualitative methods, the intricate exploration of Mani and Trae's story reveals how everyday solidarity LGBTQ + BIPOC folks and their white accomplices' experiences is both strategic and visionary, and offers the possibility for resistance and liberation beyond the binary between overly negative/positive narratives. This article contributes to the discourse on embodied relationality, spatial affect, and everyday resistance within research on LGBTQ + kinship, solidarity and community.

The second approach contextualizes queer perspectives by centering the different settings from which they emerge, such as geopolitical, sociocultural and institutional. For instance, the article by Silveira et al. (2025) “‘By standing up for another, I derived some strength to stand up for myself’: doing queer coalition work in an Indian business school” describes collective experiences of queer-feminist-anti-caste coalitional work in business and management school spaces in India. The article contributes to the discourse on coalitional building by re-examining this practice within the context of queering spaces, combating cis-heteronormative, sexist and casteist structures at their workplace. The queering of space is illustrated through the emotional-physical labor that coalitional work entails and the practices of creating belongingness, undoing oneself, engaging in curriculum interventions and embodying everyday resilience in doing queer coalitional work. The article also highlights the complexities of coalitional work, particularly when multiple subjectivities and intersecting positionalities are involved. Alcazar Timon and Paunova's (2025) paper “Intersectionality and internal discrimination in the Danish LGBTQIA + community: a systemic queer lens on ‘nordic exceptionalism’” explores discrimination within Denmark's LGBTQIA + community despite its inclusive reputation. Building on Queer Theory and Intersectional Systems Theory, the authors introduce a “Systemic Queer Lens” (SQL) to inform DEI strategies and understand intersectionality in organizational contexts. Their analysis of interviews with DEI professionals and members of the queer community in Denmark show how societal norms perpetuate discrimination even in seemingly safe spaces, especially for marginalized subgroups. The authors discuss how these issues are often overlooked in a country characterized by Nordic exceptionalism and progressive ideals as well homonormative standards within the LGBTQIA + community, meaning that DEI efforts often only serve those who conform. The study emphasizes the complex interplay of discrimination and inclusivity in the context of Denmark and advocates for a more intersectional approach to tackle identity-related challenges and social justice issues within the LGBTQIA + community and organizations.

The third approach addresses queering through writing differently. Rostrum's (2025) paper “‘Trying to tell it all to you’: creating queer spaces through poetic organising” employs autoethnographic and poetic approaches in their theoretical inquiry into what constitutes ‘queer spaces’. Drawing on their own experience as a poet and avid reader of poetry as well as their experiences with the queer community, Rostron persuasively argues that queer spaces build on poetic organizing. For Rostron, this is because poetry offers a unique and relational way of “speaking one's truth to another”. Poetic organizing is grounded in the effort of “trying to tell it all” in individual relationships, constructing “make-shift-shelters” in the process of striving to better understand one another. As such, the notion of poetic organizing offers a complementary perspective for organizing difference – radically and relationally. Wilson's (2025) autoethnographic piece “Whose urinal is it anyway?: Black nonbinary trans* femme resistance in public restrooms” is rooted in Trans* studies and Black feminist thought and offers a vivid insider account of how gender-expansive individuals navigate gender-segregated public restrooms. The author, a Black nonbinary trans femme, anchors their autoethnographic narrative in embodied knowledge as well as field notes, reflexive journal entries, and artifacts such as poetry and photographs. By weaving together the concepts of situational docility and passing, the paper interrogates why presenting femininely does not always translate to safety or acceptance, and why the author often forgoes “passing” in favor of using the urinal anyway. Tremblay's (2025) paper “Queering ways of doing research in MOS with a queer ethos and writing” illustrates possibilities that emerge from using a queer ethos, through examples from authors who explored queer theory in Management and Organization Studies, queer activists' experiences/knowledge and the author's own experience as a PhD student doing and writing queered research, using metaphors from queer communities to inspire new ways of writing academic research. The paper articulates how a queer ethos, which is described as an attitude of openness, provocation and discomfort, can guide the process of doing research and renew daily practices in academia. Tremblay presents a queer writing inspired by queer concepts of gender fluidity, camp and dis/orientation as a way to rethink standards for the dissemination of academic knowledge. The article shows how queer theory still offers underexplored avenues to destabilize and resignify our way of doing and writing research in MOS by questioning binaries and processes that normalize.

The fourth approach centers queer bodies and experiences of the authors themselves. Queer authors writing about their own experiences in different forms is a means of killjoy activism within academia. Such activism highlights a commitment to become willful subjects that do not succumb to the general will of happiness as a normative state of being (Guschke et al., 2022) by taking up “the cause of not making happiness our cause” (Ahmed, 2023, p. 222) within traditional organization research. Some articles in our special issue, such as those by Ali Rostron, Miguel Wilson and Maryse Tremblay do this by writing from autoethnographic accounts. Other papers from Chris Steyaert and Pippa Sterk approach embodiment through affective ethnography, and co-authored pieces, like the one by Cristina Dominguez, Trae Middlebrooks and Mani Valeria, highlight relationality through collective ethnography, blurring the lines between researcher and participant. These diverse queer embodied approaches involve being attuned to the inheritance gifted by global and local queer activist traditions, movements, and organizing. The queer troublemakers embody such legacies so as to claim a different future–a queer politics that imagines and fights for–a different world, where differently imagined worlds create livable conditions for queer lives. Through this special issue, queer troublemakers occupy and reclaim academic writing and publishing in MOS, which on a smaller scale might require snapping, that is, breaking with existing power relations (be those familial, societal, or institutional) and the status quo to mark and orientate oneself toward new beginnings (Basner et al., 2018; Ahmed, 2017).

In times of rising fascism and anti-queer backlash which poses threats to queer lives and academic knowledge, queering the field of management and organization studies continues in this special issue. Such queer interventions are vital not only for fostering work across interdisciplinary fields and transnational spaces but also for resisting academic and institutional norms. Across disciplines and outside of gender and sexuality studies, queer research and queer perspectives remain limited, most often taken up by those who can openly be queer. The role of allyship in spaces which pose threats to queer people is essential, particularly in supporting queer resistance against institutional norms and for advancing anti-fascist, queer justice struggles.

This special issue invites readers to view the world by grounding queer experiences instead of using queering as a metaphor. Queer Theory and theories of queer embodiment, affect and solidarity as developed from differing philosophies has enabled queer writers to challenge conventional ideas about gender and sexuality. Further, queer activism can simultaneously question established academic frameworks and confront and hopefully dismantle social inequalities. Taken together the papers in this issue remind us that queer lives, that queer embodiment, solidarity, activism and resistance across intersectionalities are the basis for practices of allyship and for imagining different worlds. Several papers in this issue refer to queer worldmaking, a future where fascism, imperialism, and patriarchy are dismantled through queering practices. Such imagining will need to critique neoliberalism which often functions by assimilating and depoliticizing queer identities, recasting them into commodified and normative forms of diversity that align with market-driven values. Furthermore, it will also need to dismantle white supremacy and colonialism which create exclusive white queer spaces and weaponize pinkwashing for ongoing colonization, apartheid and genocide. Queer theory offers a critical framework that should be understood to challenge all dominant power structures, going beyond normative assumptions about gender and sexuality, and advocating for transformative structural change that liberates all oppressed people. Such imagining can seek inspiration from historical events of queer rebellion and resistance, which have traditionally emerged from the most marginalized, multiply disadvantaged groups of queer people. This reengagement with queer histories and intimacies will spark opportunities to further disrupt institutional norms which neutralize opportunities for dissent. Queer troublemakers across intersectional solidarities will need to embrace radical praxis. Crossing the borders of decolonial, race and queer theory will be vital, as will the continued research into local queer experiences.

In closing, we are mindful of our own intersectionalities and what this means for affective solidarity. As three white editors, we have approached this special issue with an openness to be challenged, aware of how our own positions shape what we notice, what we miss, and what we must keep learning. Working alongside queer authors and reviewers of Color has reminded us how vital it is to attend carefully to the intersections of queerness and race, ethnicity, cast and religion, places where experiences, vulnerabilities, and resistances meet in ways that white queer spaces too often overlook. These collaborations have asked us to listen differently, to sit with discomfort, and to recognize the limits of our own perspectives. We know that solidarity is not something we can simply declare; it is something we have to practice through care, accountability, and a readiness to be changed by what we learn from others. White queer spaces have too often claimed universality while closing the door to others (Reiss, n.d.); we need to do better. For us, affective solidarity is about that shared emotional labor that starts with working through our own complicity and unawarenesses: slow, relational work of holding space for difference, questioning ourselves, learning from each other, and building connection across uneven terrains of power. This issue reflects our commitment to that process and honors the voices that continue to expand what queer world-making can be. At the same time, we urge the field to move into a direction where more persons of Color are not only published in but also in the lead on special issues.

We also recognize that the growing anti-queer backlash does not affect all who work with or through queer theory and queer lenses in the same way. For many cis straight researchers, queerness can be taken up as a framework, a method, or even an aesthetic without exposing them to the precarity, hostility, or erasure that queer and trans people with lived experience continue to face. The straight and cis among us will, by and large, be fine, and if necessary change their research focus with no harm. We argue that this safety carries responsibility. It calls for an ongoing examination of privilege, a refusal of performative allyship, and a commitment to solidarity that is felt and enacted rather than declared. Affective solidarity in queer(ing) research might look like slowing down, listening across differences, making space for discomfort, and centering the embodied knowledge that emerge from vulnerability and survival instead of appropriating abstract theorizations stemming from queer struggle. It means doing the work with, not on or about, queer lives and allowing those encounters to shift how research itself is imagined, written, and shared.

This special issue has been generously supported by Jannick Friis Christensen who started this journey with us before becoming a practitioner. Richard Longman and Paulina Segarra kindly welcomed us at QROM, reminding us that solidarity is based in action. This special issue would not have been possible without the authors who have embodied queer troublemaking. Our sincere thanks to our reviewers who continued to devote their labour, even after moving the issue to QROM. Our gratitude also extends to the growing Queer Feminist Research Network, which has a new home at Feminism and Organization.