Abstract
ABSTRACTLGBTQ activists have a crucial role in fighting sexuality-based discrimination. However, homonormativity can lead activists to adhere to hegemonic heteronormativity, thus threatening their efforts to widen the concept of family. Drawing on the Gramscian notion of hegemony, this article analyzes the notion of heteronormativity and its homonormative facet as a form of hegemony that impacts activists, sustaining the premises of heteronormativity and seeking inclusion within such norms. This research investigates the hegemonic heteronormative assumptions that endure in the discourses of Italian LGBTQ activists when they talk about lesbian and gay parenting. Findings highlight the presence of heteronormative traces in their discourses, namely in terms of access to reproduction, the parents’ place within the regime of gender, and the right standards for child rearing. Hegemonic heteronormativity appears in multiform ways, and as largely consensual even to those it more directly oppresses, making it difficult to detect and therefore to deconstruct.
Highlights
Most European countries have produced laws regulating same-sex coupledom (Seidman, 2002; Weeks, 2007), and in many cases lesbian and gay parenting has been legitimized, heteronormativity has not lost the power to define sex, gender, and sexuality, establishing the boundary between the natural heterosexual family and “others” (Warner, 1991)
This study has revealed the heteronormative assumptions that endure in the discussions of LGBTQ activists about lesbian and gay parenting
The analysis of LGBTQ activists’ discourses about lesbian and gay parenting has revealed the traces of a conception of reproduction and kinship, deeply rooted in the Italian cultural context, which has historically suppressed any alternative to the heteronorms
Summary
Most European countries have produced laws regulating same-sex coupledom (Seidman, 2002; Weeks, 2007), and in many cases lesbian and gay parenting has been legitimized, heteronormativity has not lost the power to define sex, gender, and sexuality, establishing the boundary between the natural heterosexual family and “others” (Warner, 1991). The section on adoption rights initially laid down in the law proposal was so controversial that it had to be deleted in order for the law to pass This reveals that, despite the law on same-sex civil unions being approved, heteronormativity (Kitzinger, 2005; Warner, 1991) in Italy grants only partial access of lesbian and gay couples to state institutions, while, at the same time, it still constructs heterosexuality as the only acceptable sexuality, marginalizing parents who do not conform to the dominant views of reproduction and kinship. In many cases, constructing women as naturally oriented to care led to building complementary gender roles for men and women based on supposed enduring internal disposition as well as family arrangement based on gender order of society (Connell, 2009) This emerged, for instance, when Donatella (A3), the only mother among participants, told what happened when her son’s teacher asked her whether the child should be involved in the Father’s Day activities or not. Donatella perceived the teacher’s request as out of line and she wanted to contend it, her answer implied the need for the child to self-identify with a same-sex figure, and she could not escape the trap that considers the primary sexual difference as the core of psychic life
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