‘More than lip service’: LGBTQ+ Social Justice Educational Interventions as Institutional Benign Neglect

Abstract

Using Ahmed’s (2012) scholarship on diversity work and institutional life as a conceptual framework, we examine how LGBTQ+ social justice educational intervention (SJEI) facilitators described the challenges of their role. We found LGBTQ+ SJEI facilitators descriptions of their role revealed institutional dynamics that undermine purported support of equity-based work. Institutional realities that facilitators faced were neither intentionally malicious nor hostile, and encapsulated by the descriptor of benign neglect. Our findings expose how LGBTQ+ SJEIs operate as non-performatives treated with benign neglect through unenforceable authority, administrative gaslighting, and resource scarcity.