Showing papers on "Heteronormativity published in 2016"

When Sex and Power Collide: An Argument for Critical Sexuality Studies

Abstract: Attentive to the collision of sex and power, we add momentum to the ongoing development of the subfield of critical sexuality studies. We argue that this body of work is defined by its critical orientation toward the study of sexuality, along with a clear allegiance to critical modalities of thought, particularly feminist thought. Critical sexuality studies takes its cues from several other critical moments in related fields, including critical psychology, critical race theory, critical public health, and critical youth studies. Across these varied critical stances is a shared investment in examining how power and privilege operate, understanding the role of historical and epistemological violence in research, and generating new models and paradigms to guide empirical and theoretical research. With this guiding framework, we propose three central characteristics of critical sexuality studies: (a) conceptual analysis, with particular attention to how we define key terms and conceptually organize our research (e.g., attraction, sexually active, consent, agency, embodiment, sexual subjectivity); (b) attention to the material qualities of abject bodies, particularly bodies that are ignored, overlooked, or pushed out of bounds (e.g., viscous bodies, fat bodies, bodies in pain); and (c) heteronormativity and heterosexual privilege, particularly how assumptions about heterosexuality and heteronormativity circulate in sexuality research. Through these three critical practices, we argue that critical sexuality studies showcases how sex and power collide and recognizes (and tries to subvert) the various power imbalances that are deployed and replicated in sex research.

Queering women, peace and security

Abstract: The aim of the eight Women, Peace and Security (WPS) United Nations Security Council resolutions, beginning with UNSCR 1325 in 2000, is to involve women in peacebuilding, reconstruction and gender mainstreaming efforts for gendered equality in international peace and security work. However, the resolutions make no mention of masculinity, femininity or the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) population. Throughout the WPS architecture the terms ‘gender’ and ‘women’ are often used interchangeably. As a result, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) tracking and monitoring fail to account for individuals who fall outside a heteronormative construction of who qualifies as ‘women’. Those vulnerable to insecurity and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity remain largely neglected by the international peace and security community. Feminist security studies and emerging queer theory in international relations provide a framework to incorporate a gender perspective in WPS work that moves beyond a narrow, binary understanding of gender to begin to capture violence targeted at the LGBTQ population, particularly in efforts to address SGBV in conflict-related environments. The article also explores the ways in which a queer security analysis reveals the part heteronormativity and cisprivilege play in sustaining the current gap in analysis of gendered violence.

Queer international relations

Abstract: Queer International Relations (IR) is not a new field. For more than 20 years, Queer IR scholarship has focused on how normativities and/or non-normativities associated with categories of sex, gender, and sexuality sustain and contest international formations of power in relation to institutions like heteronormativity, homonormativity, and cisnormativity as well as through queer logics of statecraft. Recently, Queer IR has gained unprecedented traction in IR, as IR scholars have come to recognize how Queer IR theory, methods, and research further IR’s core agenda of analyzing and informing the policies and politics around state and nation formation, war and peace, and international political economy. Specific Queer IR research contributions include work on sovereignty, intervention, security and securitization, torture, terrorism and counter-insurgency, militaries and militarism, human rights and LGBT activism, immigration, regional and international integration, global health, transphobia, homophobia, development and International Financial Institutions, financial crises, homocolonialism, settler colonialism and anti-Blackness, homocapitalism, political/cultural formations, norms diffusion, political protest, and time and temporalities

Teaching about sexual minorities and “princess boys”: a queer and trans-infused approach to investigating LGBTQ-themed texts in the elementary school classroom

Abstract: This paper is based on research that is concerned to provide insight into the pedagogical potential for interrupting heteronormativity and addressing the politics of gender expression/embodiment in the elementary school classroom. It is informed by an engagement with queer and trans theoretical literature that raises questions about restrictive social systems governing thought regarding gendered and sexual regulatory norms. The focus is on examining pedagogical matters related to both interrupting heteronormativity and addressing what comes to be recognized as a viable gendered personhood through employing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ)-themed texts in schools. The paper concentrates on investigating the insights of one queer-identifying elementary school teacher as she reflects on the pedagogical potential of deploying literacy resources for discussing themes such as same-sex families and relationships, and transgendered and gender diverse subjectivities in the classroom. The ...

Heteronormativity and practitioner–patient interaction

Abstract: Heteronormativity is the presumption of heterosexuality as the default sexual orientation and can result in discrimination against the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population. This study serves as one of the first experimental studies to examine heteronormative perceptions in communication and their effects on practitioner-patient relationships. LGB participants were randomly assigned to read either heteronormative or non-heteronormative vignettes of a doctor-patient interaction. They then indicated how much health-relevant information they would disclose to the doctor in the vignette and their level of trust in the doctor. In the heteronormative condition, participants were less likely to disclose health-relevant information to the doctor in the vignette and were less trustful of the doctor as compared to those in the non-heteronormative condition. These results have important health implications, as lack of disclosure and trust may prevent people from getting needed care and prevent doctors from giving the best health advice possible. The results of this study provide further evidence that there is a need for more education for all health care professionals to feel comfortable while respectfully communicating with and treating patients who do not identify as heterosexual in order to ensure the best health care experience.

Towards Queering the Business School: A Research Agenda for Advancing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Perspectives and Issues

Abstract: This article draws on queer theory to advance a research agenda that foregrounds lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) perspectives and issues as one means by which business schools can be made queer(er) institutions to work. As such, this article employs a process of queering to expose how LGBT people experience and negotiate the heteronormativity within business schools. A queering approach is encouraged to generate research on LGBT sexualities that can reveal instances of queerness within business schools, with the aim of helping LGBT people and their allies to foster alternative ways of relating, identifying and organizing that transcend heteronormativity. As such, the research agenda elaborates on the importance of the following: problematizing organizational heteronormativity; queering organizational and management knowledge; and the role of straight and queer allies. This article concludes by speculating about the implications of a queer(er) business school for LGBT people and their allies.

The Gender Buffet LGBTQ Parents Resisting Heteronormativity

Abstract: Many parents and child-rearing experts prefer that children exhibit gender-normative behavior, a preference that is linked to the belief that children are, or should be, heterosexual. But how do LGBTQ parents—who may not hold these preferences—approach the gender socialization of their children? Drawing on in-depth interviews with both members in 18 LGBTQ couples, I find that these parents attempt to provide their children with a variety of gendered options for clothing, toys, and activities—a strategy that I call the “gender buffet.” However, the social location of the parents influences the degree to which they feel they can pursue this strategy of resistance. Factors such as race, social class, gender of parents and children, and level of support of family and community members contribute to the degree to which LGBTQ parents feel they can allow or encourage their children to disrupt gender norms.

To Count or Not to Count: Queering Measurement and the Transgender Community

Abstract: An area of increasing attention at the intersection of social sciences and queer theory is how to study LGBTQ+ populations, particularly what methods are most appropriate for assessing the fluid subjectivities contained within the broader LGBTQ+ community. In this context, estimating the size of the queer (LGBTQ+) population both challenges this fluidity and acts to undermine heteronormativity and its exercise of Foucauldian governmentality (Foucault 1978). If compulsory heterosexuality "others" queer populations, then counting queer populations may undermine this "otherness" by demonstrating the legitimate needs of the LGBTQ+ population for basic facilities. The urgent need for transgender access to safe bathrooms and social services, including medical care, justifies the act of counting. Bathroom access enables trans and other gender-nonconforming people to move through public space. Since politicians excel in counting votes, without more complete estimates of trans and gender nonnormative people, public officials are unlikely to invest in safe and accessible public facilities. In late 2015 and early 2016, legislative efforts to keep transgender people out of bathrooms have intensified, making the counting issue even more critical.Queer methodologies require both researchers and subjects to acknowledge the complexity of their subjectivities and lived experiences (Ryan-Flood and Rooke 2009). Interactions between researcher and subject are easily compromised when respondents are subjectively categorized to facilitate the aims of the research. For instance, Warner (2004) argues that most research on LGBTQ+ populations reifies research subjects into fixed categories chosen by the researcher that do not reflect the lived realities of these subjects. Browne's (2008) participation in a quantitative survey using "tick boxes" to identify various LGBTQ+ subjectivities risked "selling out" her identity as a queer researcher, but it did provide useful insights into the inequalities faced by some lesbian and gay subjects that were an essential first step to ameliorating inequality and developing more just policies.Clearly, the measurement of subjective categories can be tricky. Weston (2009) suggests that measuring lesbian subjectivities requires the deconstruction of even the most basic approaches. For example, simply asking a subject about their identity is fraught, because self-identification is dependent on the ways that individuals interpret what it means to be a lesbian. However, because such identities, including "ex-lesbians" and men who identify as lesbians, are often in flux, the lesbian category destabilizes the very research process. Because self-definition also permits anyone to lay claim to lesbian identity, the results can be at odds with so-called common sense understandings of the term. In a pop-culture example of the fluid boundaries of self-definition, a character on the television drama The L Word, who was born male, insisted he identified as a lesbian and struck up a relationship with a female character who had a history of erotic involvement with other women (Weston 2009, 142).Measuring transgender identity is harder to do since it is one of the least visible segments of the LGBTQ+ rainbow. This paper applies a queer theory lens that seeks both to destabilize categories such as "gender" and to avoid severing queer bodies from the environment in which they live, breathe, and excrete bodily fluids. Within queer theory, Jagose, among others, highlights the instability of identity categories, arguing that "queer is an identity category that has no interest in consolidating or even stabilizing itself. . . . [Q]ueer is always an identity under construction" (1996, 131). Corber and Valocchi (2003) suggest that subjectivities arise not from within the self but outside it. Butler (1990) extends this instability to the performance of gender that transcends the body, and Grosz (1992) argues that a complex feedback relation exists between bodies and environments. …

Australian LGBTQ teachers, exclusionary spaces and points of interruption

Abstract: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) teachers are a marginalised group that historically have been absent from research on sexuality and schooling. Rather, much research in the fie...

The ‘problem’ with single women Choice, accountability and social change

Abstract: Despite increased acknowledgement of gender equality as a social good, there are some areas where the practice of women’s autonomy is apparently inconsistent with the normative prescriptions of a new ‘empowered’ form of femininity. Sexuality and personal relationship status are sites where women are positioned within neo-liberal and post-feminist discourse in such a way that their choices are subject to questioning. A model of gender hegemony is useful for understanding how and why choosing to be single may still constitute a ‘problem’ for women, despite the intensification of messages which also address women as autonomous, sexualized subjects. In cultures dominated by an ideology of marriage and family life, single women’s identity work resolves contradictions in the current gender order and in the process reinstates heteronormativity.

Because Moms Say So: Narratives of Lesbian Mothers in Italy

Abstract: The Italian situation of lesbian women-parented families seems to be trapped between a deprivation of public and legal acknowledgment and the reality of everyday lives of lesbian women having children in a same-sex relationship context experiencing this ambivalence in their personal, familiar, and social existence. The aim of this study is to analyze the narratives of 17 lesbian mothers (10 biological mothers and seven social mothers) in order to outline the construction of their identities as parents, their affective relationships with the partner (social mother), and the relationships established with public agencies (school, neighborhood, family networks). Results show that lesbian maternity has strong political and social implications. In particular, our analysis underlines the libertarian extent of lesbian maternity paths, often based on equal roles and promoting the enlargement of the concepts of family. Our findings suggest that the lack of legal recognition has a threatening effect on the ...

The Gendered and Heterosexist Evolution of the Teacher Exemplar in the United States: Equity Implications for LGBTQ and Gender Nonconforming Teachers.

Abstract: Challenges confront lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender public school teachers or those who are perceived as such or who desire to be open about their sexual orientations or gender identities or expression. Teachers who do not conform to gender and sexual orientation norms currently are and historically have been the subject of persecution, urban myths, and general hysteria—part of bigger efforts to normalize heterosexuality and cisgender-ness through the development of a distinctive “exemplar” related to who teachers should be. We examine the related historical and legal context of gender and sexuality in schools and then offer suggestions regarding how to redress the lingering impacts of gender- and heteronormativity.

Accounting for Self, Sex and Sexuality in UK Social Workers’ Knowledge Base: Findings from an Exploratory Study

Abstract: The social work profession struggles to engage with sexuality under the anti-oppressive banner as deftly as it does with other types of social difference, such as ethnicity, age, class and gender. Despite recent theorising and empirical work about sexuality in social work, little is known about social workers’ perceptions, knowledge and values about sexuality in contemporary professional practice. This exploratory study is the first to examine social workers’ beliefs and values about sexuality in relation to everyday professional interactions within the UK. It aims to better account for the ways in which sexuality is constructed and understood within interactions with colleagues and clients. Utilisation of an online survey instrument examined 112 respondents’ perceptions about sexuality, incorporating the Heteronormativity Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (Habarth, 2015) and open-ended questions exploring how social workers acquire knowledge about sexuality. Respondents were qualified social workers from Wales, England and Scotland. Findings suggest that some respondents ‘bracketed’ values to manage between professional and personal identities. We found a relationship between social workers’ religiosity and investment in heteronormative beliefs. Implications for delivery of services to social work clients and practitioners’ learning needs are discussed.

Lesbian and bisexual women's sexual healthcare experiences

Abstract: Aims and objectives To develop insight into the experiences of lesbian and bisexual women accessing sexual health services and an understanding of their needs within the New Zealand context. Background Lesbian and bisexual women are typically invisible in healthcare settings due to heteronormative assumptions. As lesbian and bisexual women are reluctant to come out to clinicians, opportunities for targeted opportunistic health education are often missed. Lesbian and bisexual women have different needs from both heterosexual women and gay men when seeking healthcare. There has been little exploration of the experiences of lesbian and bisexual women accessing healthcare in the New Zealand context. Design Qualitative descriptive design. Methods Participants (n = 6) were recruited via advertisements and snowball sampling. Those recruited lived in a provincial city in New Zealand; self-identified as lesbian or bisexual; and met the inclusion criteria. Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were used to obtain narrative data about participants being recipients of healthcare. Results Five themes were identified within the data set: Heteronormativity; The conundrum of safer sex; Implied and overt homophobia; Engagement with health promotion; and Resilience. Conclusion This study highlighted the difficulties that lesbian and bisexual women face when seeking sexual healthcare, primarily due to clinicians' heteronormative assumptions. Lesbian and bisexual women have found ways of navigating the health system that make them feel safe(r) despite experiencing many adversities such as homophobia. Relevance to clinical practice This study's findings can be used to guide further research to identify ways to optimise clinicians' engagement with lesbian and bisexual women. Recognition of diversity and skilful communication are essential to rectify inequities and effectively target health information.

"I am yet to encounter any survey that actually reflects my life": a qualitative study of inclusivity in sexual health research.

Abstract: Heteronormativity describes a set of norms and assumptions pertaining to heterosexual identities and binary gender. In 2015, we conducted our annual Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll study, an online health survey of over 1000 Victorians aged 15–29 years. Feedback from participants suggested that our survey contained heteronormative language. In response to this, we aimed to make inclusive changes to our survey via consultation with young gender and sexually diverse (GSD) people. We conducted two semi-structured focus groups in Melbourne with a total of 16 participants (age range: 21–28 years). Participants were mostly cisgender women, and there were two transgender participants and one non-binary participant. Participants also had a range of sexual identities including lesbian, queer, bisexual, pansexual, and asexual. Focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Most participants indicated heteronormativity affects their lives in multiple ways, noting its impacts on access to sexual healthcare, invalidating sexual experiences and miscommunication in forms and surveys. Overall, participants emphasised the need for sexual health research to avoid assumptions about behaviour, to be clear and eliminate question ambiguity and avoiding treating gender as binary. Participants also discussed how the Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll survey could address a range of sexual behaviours and experiences, rather than focusing on penetrative sex, which many participants found invalidating. Our findings have important implications for future health surveys aimed at general populations. We present recommendations that encourage research to be more inclusive to ensure data collection from GSD participants is respectful and rigorous.

Ambiguous Loss as a Framework for Interpreting Gender Transitions in Families

Abstract: In this article, we use an ambiguous loss framework to guide a process for decentering cisnormativity (the assumption that biological sex and gender are aligned) within families, specifically for those experiencing the gender identity transitions of family members. Individual family members have varied experiences with regard to gender transition and may or may not experience ambiguous loss depending on their position within the family system. Trans* persons themselves may also experience ambiguous loss as a result of the dialectical tension of acceptance and rejection by family members. We apply resilience processes developed for work with persons facing ambiguous loss to support trans* persons and their families as they navigate gender transitions.

Hiding in Plain Sight The Production of Heteronormativity in Medical Education

Abstract: Mounting evidence that sexual minority status is linked to stigma, stress, and health disparities necessitates critical analysis of medical sex education. In this article, I use ethnographic data t...

‘They're just not mature right now’: teachers' complicated perceptions of gender and anti-queer bullying

Abstract: Sexuality education teachers in the USA are often the only officially sanctioned voice in schools charged with teaching students about sexuality and gender. This paper considers the ways in which sexuality education teachers conceptualise gender and anti-queer bullying in order to explore the ways in which teachers understand their own role in the systems of power that lead to gender policing and anti-queer bullying. The study finds that teachers' notions of gender are often linked to essentialist and stereotypical notions of sex and that their beliefs about anti-queer bullying reinforce problematic discourses that dismiss bullying as immature and silence queer potentials for young people.

Kissing brides and loving hot vampires: children’s construction and perpetuation of heteronormativity in elementary school classrooms

Abstract: This paper explores notions of (hetero)sexuality circulating in elementary school classrooms through an analysis of students’ own talk and interactions. Data collected during a multi-site ethnography in a diverse set of elementary schools demonstrate that while curricular silences and teachers contribute to heteronormative classroom environments, children also take up and perpetuate heteronormative ideals in their own interactions both through explicitly anti-gay talk and by silencing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ)-inclusive perspectives, thereby maintaining the heteronormativity of schools. Findings show (hetero)sexuality to be a constitutive part of classroom life, present even in the formal teaching/instructional time of elementary schools and even in the talk/activities of children themselves. Uninterrupted, these discourses intersect with the official curriculum and reify schools as places in which LGBTQ people/perspectives are not welcome or valued, creating social and acad...

Exercising in comfort: Islamicate culture of Mahremiyet in everyday Istanbul

Abstract: Women’s control of their bodily movements, especially in the Islamicate contexts of the Middle East, constitutes a multilayered process of building privacy, heterosexuality, and intimacy. Physical exercise, however, with the extensive body movements it requires, problematizes women’s ability to control their public sexualities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2012 in Istanbul, this article explores the everyday concerns of Istanbulite women who seek rahatlik (comfort) during exercise. The interviewees frequently used the word rahatlik when referring to women-only spaces in the culture of mahremiyet (intimacy, privacy). This article furthers the scholarship on Muslim sexualities by examining the diversity of women’s concerns regarding their public sexualities and the boundary-making dynamics in the culture of mahremiyet. I argue that mahremiyet operates as an institution of intimacy that provides a metacultural intelligibility for heteronormativity based on sexual scripts, normative spaces, and gendered acts.

Queer Phenomenology, Sexual Orientation, and Health Care Spaces: Learning From the Narratives of Queer Women and Nurses in Primary Health Care

Abstract: Queer phenomenology as an interpretive framework can advance health research by illuminating why primary health care providers (HCPs) must move beyond definitions of sexuality as a set of reified identity formations indexed to normative gender, gender of partner, and sexual and reproductive practices. Our interviews with queer women participants and primary care nurses offer an implicit critique of heteronormative health care space, temporality, and power relations, as they form the lived experiences of our participants. We conclude by pointing to the limits of our methodology in exposing the larger relations of power that dictate experiences of heteronormative health care.

Exiles of Heteronormativity: Queer Reproduction and Female Same-Sex Families in Singapore

Abstract: Maulod, Nur ‘Adlina. PhD, Purdue University, August 2016. Exiles of Heteronormativity: Queer Reproduction and Female Same-Sex Families in Singapore. Major Professor: Evelyn Blackwood In Singapore, same-sex desires and practices are treated as antithetical to the Family. This dissertation challenges the rhetorical monolith of the traditional family by documenting intimate stories of alternative reproduction from the experiences of female citizens who have been treated as exiles of heteronormative kinship. My ethnographic research delves into the rich narratives of fourteen Singaporean Malay and Chinese queer and cisgender women and five Malay masculine-identified female-bodied (butch) individuals who are presently co-parenting, planning to have children or have raised children with a same-sex partner. I explore how participants acquire children and construct forms of relatedness in a country where homosexuality has yet to be decriminalized and social reproductive policies heavily restrict citizens, especially women, from pursuing non-traditional paths to family, that the state defines as being legally married, and raising children in a stable family unit. I found three distinct patterns of alternative reproduction among my research participants: a) Heterogendered families of working-class masculine-identified Malay butch fathers who partner with feminine, and often, heterosexual-identified unwed or divorced mothers, b) Middleclass Chinese lesbian co-mothers who acquire motherhood through Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ART) and c) Malay and Chinese lesbian/bisexual women who are either raising or planning to raise biological children in single-mother households. Participants’ diverse routes to achieving parenthood suggest the significance of race, class as well as gendered sexual subjectivities in assembling particular “chosen” family forms. This dissertation intervenes in contemporary queer scholarship on lesbian-led households which tends to focus on sexuality as the primary mode of organizing non-normative family life. I demonstrate how same-sex families experience multiple and intersectional forms of reproductive

Leaning in to Discomfort: Preparing Literacy Teachers for Gender and Sexual Diversity

Abstract: IntroductionAs literacy teacher educators and researchers who identify as queer, we (Sara and Bethy) have been deeply affected by the disturbing number of lives lost in recent years among youth who identified or were perceived to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ).1 Embedded in many narratives left behind by those youth was evidence that school was often an unsafe place and a contributing factor to the hastened end of young life. Given the resounding silence around gender and sexual diversity (GSD) (Meyer, 2010) that has long pervaded teacher preparation (Athanases & Larrabee, 2003; Gorski, Davis, & Reiter, 2013; Mayo, 2007; Quinn & Meiners, 2011; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2008; Vavrus, 2009), we argue that university-based teacher education in English language arts has also been complicit. Given our own positions within that enterprise and the commitments to democracy, diversity, and social justice we emphasize in our scholarship, we understand this problem as a moral dilemma with which we are obligated to grapple. We have sought to confront that dilemma by foregrounding GSD in our work with preservice and inservice literacy teachers. In this article, we provide an account of what happened when we endeavored to do that work with a group of preservice secondary ELA teachers in the context of a literacy methods course by reorganizing the curriculum and situating GSD at heart-center.During the fall of 2012, Sara piloted a reorganized, GSD-themed curriculum with preservice teachers enrolled in the literacy methods course. Encouraged by the generally enthusiastic ways in which many students responded, and keenly aware of the need for empirical studies that explore what happens when preservice teachers are afforded opportunities to grapple with GSD (Greytak & Kosciw, 2014; Payne & Smith, 2012; Szalacha, 2004), we designed a study to document what happened when we enacted that curriculum with a new group that would populate the course the following spring. Initially, we were interested in how students would respond to our integration of GSD-inclusive topics, including heteronormativity and queer-inclusive literacy practices. What we found was that the curriculum put many students into "crisis" (Kumashiro, 2000a, 2000b, 2001,2002a). That is to say, our foregrounding of GSD invited complex emotional responses as students both resisted and engaged with the process of unlearning (Britzman, 1998) commonsense notions (for example, that schools are generally safe), and as they grew in awareness of how teachers-the very professionals they were in the process of learning to become-have been complicit in making schooling unsafe for queer youth. Moreover, we found that the curriculum confronted many students with the partiality of their knowledge (Kumashiro, 2001) and brought uncertainty at a time in their preparation when they expected to learn how to do this thing we call teaching. As Kumashiro (2002a) suggests, emotional crisis is central to anti-oppressive education, and as we will demonstrate, discomfort importantly shaped how some preservice teachers responded to the curriculum-that is, by resisting discomfort altogether. Others, though, were willing to move toward discomfort. In this work, we refer to that coming toward as a deliberate move to lean in (Chodron, 2009).2 Our findings suggest that by semester's end, participants who desired to lean in to discomfort also positioned themselves to become strong advocates for queer youth.We situate this research in calls to "strengthen teacher knowledge of LGBT issues" (National Council of Teachers of English, 2007) and expand the research agenda of LGBTQ issues in education generally (Wimberly, 2015) and literacy teacher preparation specifically. There is a growing body of literature on preparing literacy educators to organize learning environments that affirm queer youths' identities (e.g., Blackburn & Clark, 2011; Dodge & Crutcher, 2015; Hermann-Wilmarth, 2010; Kedley, 2015; Schieble, 2012), and this study builds on the contributions of that important work. …

Desiring Neoliberalism

Abstract: The paper is based on the premise that neoliberalism is a political rationality that is not only anti-social but also requires an anti-democratic and violent form of statehood. However, neoliberalism is not solely based on coercion and force, but paradoxically also on consensus. This consensus is not least organized through its flexibilized and pluralized sexual politics. By focussing on sexual politics in Germany’s capital Berlin, the paper highlights that the flexibilization of the apparatus of sexuality is not merely a side effect of neoliberalism but a constitutive element of neoliberal governmentality that is deployed to legitimate an anti-democratic and violent neoliberal state. Neoliberalism uses the promise of sexual tolerance, flexibility, and pluralism in order to fulfill its anti-social, anti-democratic, and violent agenda. Furthermore, it is argued that neoliberal sexual politics require a rethinking of the concept of heteronormativity. Here, I propose to recast heteronormativity as heteronormalization.

Heteronormative Labour: Conflicting Accountability Structures among Men in Nursing

Abstract: Drawing on interview and diary data from 40 men in nursing in the US, the current study advances our theoretical understanding of how heteronormativity and masculinity intersect to shape men's performance of carework. Men in nursing are constrained by their accountability to stereotypes that they are gay and/or hypersexual, challenging their work in the feminized profession of nursing. As heteronormativity is embedded in the institution of health care, men nurses of all sexualities must perform additional labour on the job to reconcile their conflicting accountability to heteronormative stereotypes and occupational standards of care. We conceptualize this additional labour as heteronormative labour — work performed in order to strategically manage heteronormative expectations and realized through discursive, cognitive and emotional strategies. The experiences of men in caring professions remain rich for advancing theory on the relationship between sexuality and gender generally and in the workplace.

Heteronormativity and Homonormativity

Abstract: Heteronormativity is a hegemonic social system of norms, discourses, and practices that constructs heterosexuality as natural and superior to all other expressions of sexuality. Heteronormativity is based on a dichotomous understanding of complementary gender roles, and a belief that sexual relations should be relegated entirely to the private sphere. Homonormativity, then, refers to the belief that sexual minorities can and should conform to heteronormative institutions and mores in order to achieve greater acceptance into dominant society. Homonationalism is the granting of rights to homonormative sexual minorities within a nationalistic, ideological framework. Homonormativity is criticized because those who can assimilate into heteronormative structures and conform to the congruent gender roles receive more rights and privileges than those who do not or cannot assimilate. Queer scholarship explores how heteronormativity and homonormativity are implicated in the continuing discrimination against sexual and gender minorities. Keywords: heterosexism; homophobia; LGBTQ; queer theory; stratification

Heteronormativity in Elementary Schools: The Hidden and EvadedCurricula of Gender Diversity

Abstract: The culture of elementary schools has a significant impact on a child’s academic, social, and emotional wellbeing. Unfortunately, research indicates that most schools in the US tend to perpetuate a heteronormative culture which denies, silences, and stigmatizes children who display any atypical gender behaviour and/or are perceived to be lesbian or gay. The purpose of this study was to explore educators’ beliefs about, awareness of, and willingness to confront heteronormativity. Results indicate that teachers want to embrace diversity broadly defined but 1) are fearful but willing, 2) recognize barriers, 3) desire more information and support, and 4) acknowledge the need to begin early.

Reproducing the Homonormative Family: Neoliberalism, Queer Theory and Same-Sex Reproductive Law

Abstract: Introduction Within this piece I aim to build on the growing collection of work that examines the connections between "cultural and economic value", highlighting the intersecting nature of Queer Theory and Political Economy (Wesling, 2012, p. 107). I will do this by specifically focusing on The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 that legislates on assisted reproductive technology (ART), examining its implications for same-sex reproduction (Ibid). The word "family" is prevalent within our culture, alluding to a multiplicity of different "social, cultural, economic and symbolic meanings", however conventionally understood as the "very foundation of society" (Weeks et al., 2001, p. 9). Despite arguments by many, including Minow (cited in Kurtz, 2003), that family now needs to be "redefined" by prioritising the "reality" of new and complex situations, current legal changes still seem to endorse traditional family formations, even when dealing with same-sex relationships that are often seen to "challenge ... heterocentric family forms" (Sheff, 2011, p. 489). Although there has been a great deal written on the homonormativity of equal marriage, same-sex reproductive law has received little attention. I will therefore be investigating the intersections of neoliberalism, LGBT rights, discourses of the family and ART as a technology of biopower which operates to normalise identities, relationships and family structures. This examination will firstly draw on Queer work that understands the interconnections between the economy, Queer Theory and heteronormativity. It will then go onto discuss the way that Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopower can be useful in examining the way that power operates, with various techniques of surveillance, internalisation and regulation being discussed to highlight the ways that neoliberal and familial discourses have become constructed as "common sense" (Foster, 2011, p. 139). Following this, there will be an examination of the LGBT rights movement, discussing how this rights discourse assimilates certain LGBT identities into heteronormativity, producing the homonormative subject. I will then turn to look specifically at the homonormativity of The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. Through an examination of Artificial Insemination and Surrogacy in relation to same-sex reproduction, I demonstrate the way that the law upholds a traditional model of how the family ought to be formed, particularly through its privileging of marriage/civil partnerships, the two parent model and binary constructions of both homosexual/heterosexual and male/female. I argue then that current same- sex reproductive laws are homonormative as they depend on neoliberal discourses of the "good" family, promoting marriage, monogamy, and personal responsibility, allowing only those who fulfil normative ideals to access reproductive rights. Queer Theory and the economy Queer Theory will be one of the primary tools used to interrogate The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 in relation to same-sex reproduction. Queer Theory, with roots in Poststructuralism, works to deconstruct the normative notions of and established binaries surrounding "male/female, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual", "real families/pseudo families" to name a few (Valocchi, 2005, p. 752; Kuvalanka and Goldberg, 2009, p. 905). The effort to dismantle these binaries and categorisations stems from the belief that they produce the "routine erasure of marginalised non-normative sexual identities and practices", while enhancing regulatory power relations within and between certain legible identity groups (Smith, 2015, p. 6). Queer here will be understood as verb rather than a noun, a way of "doing" rather than a way of "being" (Sullivan, 2003, p. 50). Therefore, taking the approach discussed by Cohen (cited in Sullivan, 2003, p. 49), Queer "recognises how numerous systems of oppression interact to regulate . …