Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey by Serkan Görkemli (review)

Few studies in rhetoric and composition have explored the bridge between literacy and the study of sexuality beyond the context of the U.S. writing classroom. Thus, Serkan Görkemli's Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey has been recognized as a major contribution to the field because of connections it makes between literacy and transnational discourses of sexuality and gender. Through engaging interviews, textual analyses, and historical insights, Görkemli proposes a "literacy-based approach to studying transnational rhetorics of sexuality in cross-cultural and international LBGT communities" (19). Recognized by the Conference on College Composition and Communication as the winner of the 2015 Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, Görkemli's analysis of Legato, an Internet-based LGBT collegiate student group in Turkey, is potentially influential for scholars of community literacy, queer rhetorics, new media, and transnational feminism.

As explained in Chapter 1, Görkemli theorizes Legato's grassroots activism using the concepts of "sexual literacy," "community literacy," and "sponsors of literacy" while also addressing literacy as a societal force and an "individual resource or practice" (19). Through this literacy-based analysis, Görkemli investigates the "individual and collective rhetorical agency and power (or lack thereof) that are necessary to generate, disseminate, and, at times, oppose representations of homosexuality in culturally and geographically diverse contexts" (12). The book immerses readers in Turkey's mid-1990s LGBT activist scene. Legato, the main organization under analysis, was founded in 1996 in an effort to initiate activism on college campuses. What began as a group of students organizing social activities such as film screenings and discussion groups at Middle East Technical University quickly spread to online spaces and college campuses throughout Turkey. By December of 2000, there were 27 Legato groups at 27 universities. In just three years, the numbers grew to 857 members at 83 colleges and universities. Unifying these individual factions and contributing to the group's accelerated growth was a shared Yahoo! group mailing list and the establishment of a Legato website. Through their hybrid presence, Legato groups disseminated sexual literacy, particularly in regards to Euro-American discourses of sexuality and LGBT identities, as well as language and tools to "critique heterosexism, the social institutions that uphold it, and the underlying biological views of gender and sexuality" (17). Their actions depended on the digital literacy of their members and community literacy, or rather, a search for alternative discourses through action, reflection, and collective action. Legato took on the role of a "sponsoring institution," in that it supported members in linking their personal sexuality with a community seeking public recognition and rights. Other competing sponsors of literacy for Legato members included the non-collegiate LGBT advocacy organization known as Kaos GL (Kaos Gay and Lesbian Cultural Research and Solidarity Association), popular media, and the nationalist state. Later chapters further explore these competing influences on Legato members.

Chapter 2 introduces readers to the dominant rhetorics of homosexuality in Turkey including the popular understanding of homosexuality as "sexual inversion," the assumption that homosexuals desire to adopt the behaviors of the opposite gender. Two Turkish celebrities serve as examples of how mass media reinforced this rhetoric of sexual inversion: Zeki Müren, a queer male singer "who wore makeup and women's clothing," and Bülent Ersoy, a "male-to-female transsexual singer" (39). While on the surface, these individuals transgressed gender norms, neither individual publicly identified as LGBT or queer and their success depended on a bargain with heterosexual normativity. Lesbianism was left largely unacknowledged in mass media even into the 2000s, and widespread oppression of the travestiler, the everyday self-identified queer subject in Turkey, was commonplace. Viewed as socially deviant men and often assumed to be sex workers, travesti were subject to police violence and familial and societal discrimination. In order to combat these sensationalized, simplistic, and negative representations of homosexuality, Legato members made flyers portraying male and...