ABSTRACT

Over a period of fewer than four decades, LGBT activists have largely succeeded in cleaving apart the entrenched association between homosexuality and criminality. This does not of course occlude queers—particularly sex workers and young, gender nonconforming, disabled, negatively racialised, and/or homeless queers—from being targeted or dismally treated by police, nor does it necessitate the incorporation of a broader critique of criminalisation into LGBT politics. However, it does indicate that the boundaries of inclusion/exclusion have been reworked. Queer Histories and the Politics of Policing explores the complex reorderings of sexuality and gender in relation to state policing. It shows how queerness has been—and continues to be—an evolving site for policing, how LGBT rights have been incorporated into the surface priorities of contemporary police agencies, and why these processes matter. This chapter outlines the aims and structure of this book and the theoretical framework of homonormativity in a settler state that underpins the analysis. It introduces the Australian city of Melbourne as the central case study, and it details the methodological approach of constructing a ‘history of the present’.