Crumbled worlds or imperfect utopias: Discussing our polarised sexual and gendered lives

Sexual and gendered lives are polarised across various points of contention within contemporary socio-political debates on a range of issues pertaining to sexuality and gender. The polarisations that develop around these issues have particular nuances and intensities that challenge how we conceptualise and understand the production, operation and impacts of polarisation in our contemporary societies and communities. The chapters in this edited collection have provided rich explorations of key examples showing the complex relations through which the polarising of sexual and gendered lives takes places. This chapter now brings together a group of early career researchers and PhD students who engage with polarisation in their research, to discuss key ideas around polarisation in response to earlier versions of the papers as presented at the 2023 ‘Polarising Sexual and Gendered Lives’ symposium in Dublin. The chapter critically reflects on the key ideas surrounding the polarising of gender and sexuality, by reflecting on polarisation in relation to Western ideas of progress, the relationality of sexual and gendered beings beyond us/them binaries, and the negotiations of coexistence across difference that take place when considering the futures polarisation is moving us towards. The authors do not aim to exhaustively summarise or critique the papers in this collection, but rather use them as points of entry to discuss polarisation around sexuality and gender in careful and productive ways.