Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey

4: Paper Tigers in Digital Closets? Lesbian and Gay Activism, the Internet, and Community Literacy

4 Paper Tigers in Digital Closets? Lesbian and Gay Activism, the Internet, and Community Literacy Media, and in particular computers and the Internet, provided Legato members with access to LGBT-related information, other LGBTs, and advocacy groups. From the perspective of technology, Legato could be understood as a collegiate access network with a broad technologically mediated reach within the national borders of Turkey. However, because one of the original goals of Legato was to establish lesbian and gay student clubs at Turkish universities, its organizational identity as an access network—as opposed to an official student club—was, from the beginning, a highly charged subject. The stark difference between what Legato was and what it aspired to become resulted in differing reactions with regard to its organizational identity. For instance, although Legato’s friendship aspect stood out more than any other for its student participants, its Internet-based nature as a virtual, rather than “real,” group made it seem less than worthy of attention to some activist-minded members and outsiders and especially some members of the established LGBT advocacy organizations. These differing perceptions prompted multiple and conflicting narratives of what Legato was as a community and informed its potential and current members’ expectations regarding the organization, as well as the nature of their ensuing participation in the organization’s activities. At the core of Legato’s brief history were two preexisting and competing models of LGBT organizing: student clubs with an emphasis on friendship and social activities versus LGBT advocacy groups with an emphasis on activism. The organization’s development illustrated that it could not, and did not, fully fit either model, for various reasons that will be discussed in 123 124 GRASSROOTS LITERACIES this chapter. In addition, Legato had a hybrid structure as an Internet-based group with offline manifestations of friendship, activism, or a mixture of both on college campuses and various other locales in Turkish cities and towns. This structure was conducive to its survival as a student group with essentially no financial or political backing. But its hybridized, horizontal structure—as opposed to a traditionally centralized, hierarchical organizational structure—was also problematic because it made it difficult for Legato to control and unify its discourse when it was manifested by individuals and subgroups in a variety of locales. Ultimately, the brief history of Legato was also a history of the emergence of a student discourse community at the intersection of preexisting organizational models and influences and the advent of digital media, in particular the Internet. These factors contributed to both the initial emergence and the eventual discontinuation of Legato and brought their own challenges in terms of student discourse generation and the initiation of members into the community. The participants in this study, who acted as key figures in this collegiate movement, faced these issues and employed a variety of strategies to respond to them, including creative uses of digital media. In analyzing Legato’s organizational challenges and the role of digital media, this chapter poses an overarching question: “How and where did uses of digital media aid and undermine the goals and health of Legato?” In answering this question, the chapter focuses on the different concepts of Legato, past models of lesbian and gay collegiate organizing in Turkey, and Legato members’ negotiation of these concepts and models in their attempts to constitute the organization as an Internet-mediated activist student community , under the umbrella term of “community literacy.” The chapter first discusses scholarly inquiries regarding community and literacy, the critiques of Internet-based activism (hence the oxymoronic metaphor of “paper tigers” for online activists), and the central role of literacy in the practices of community building, locating these issues within the political context of Legato and collegiate student activism in Turkey. Following this theoretical framework, the chapter focuses on the intersections between the history of the organizational formation of Legato and three individual student leaders’ practices of literacy in negotiating local organizational politics as they used the Internet during the process of building activist collegiate communities. Specifically, the chapter pinpoints the challenges of Internet-mediated community organizing (e.g., establishing group continuity, involving members in activism, and controlling group discourse). The discussion will cover participants’ interactions with the local LGBT advocacy group Kaos GL prior to the widespread availability of the Internet and during the emergence 125 PAPER TIGERS IN DIGITAL CLOSETS? of Legato in Ankara, describing how the sometimes contentious interactions...