A note on my positionality

This research is part of my independent work. In 2015 I defended my PhD thesis in the field of human geography and became the first human geographer to focus on the field of geographies of sexualities in Czechia. Although I have not been the first to attempt to introduce feminist thought into Czech(oslovak) geographical thinking (Blažek and Rochovská, 2006; Matejsková, 2007) these approaches have, so far, remained far from accepted by the ‘mainstream’ geographers and have a long way to go before they become established within local geographical academia. Issues related to sexual and gender minorities are, so far, mostly regarded as peripheral within Czech (Osman and Pospíšilová, 2019) as well as other Central and Eastern European geographical academia which resists feminist and queer scholarly approaches (Timár and Fekete, 2010). I have discussed this lasting disciplinary resistance toward feminist and queer thought in detail elsewhere (Pitoňák, 2019; Pitoňák and Klingorová, 2019).

Many researchers who focus on this field in the region of Central and Eastern Europe often lack institutional support and continue with their work as independent researchers or seek scholarly opportunities abroad. Some of us work in other disciplines or earn their living by working in different jobs. For me, this chapter is a result of my independent and lasting interest in contributing to the field of geographies of sexualities, informed by queer and feminist perspectives. To be able to focus on this task, I have worked in my free time, sacrificed time that I could otherwise spend with my life-partner, my family, or friends. Sometimes I had to take a vacation to be able to write or reschedule my paid-work activities and other research project duties. Oftentimes I had pondered introspectively about my lasting motivations and questioned my involvement. Yet, I remain hopeful that this work will contribute to the large field of sexuality and gender studies in geography. In a way I feel that scholarly work in this area relates to some sort of responsibility and fits into a web of both formal and informal scholarly interactions that simultaneously receive support and give it to others.