Heteronormative Culture Research Articles

Jak nawiedzają lesbijki. Homo-spektralność, tożsamość i trauma w niezależnych podcastach Midnight Radio (2018) i Weaver (2021)

The article presents the spectralisation of lesbian desire, i.e., the discursive production of the social invisibility of lesbians, through its presentation in two podcasts: Midnight Radio (2018) by Bobbie Parker and Weaver (2021) written and performed by Newton Sweeney. The issue of spectralisation combines uncanny studies with queer theory, developing the concept of the queer subject as a phantom emerging in heteronormative culture through the social repression of queerness (the process known as homo-spectrality). In this context, the podcast format is particularly interesting as a derivative of radio, a medium historically predisposed to telling ghost stories (or conveying the voice of a ghost). The analyzed titles illustrate the social mechanism of spectralisation and offer a significant reinterpretation, as they base the production of the spectre not on the psychological mechanism of repression but on the desire for preservation, maintenance, and love.

“La destruction est notre manière de bâtir”

Abstract This article examines Quebecois author Kevin Lambert’s debut novel, Tu aimeras ce que tu as tué, a disquieting story of slaughtered children who come back to the Canadian town of Chicoutimi to live normal lives in it before destroying it. The apocalyptic dimension of this tale of destruction lives up to the etymological root of apocalypse, apokalyptein (“to uncover, disclose, reveal” in Greek) by centering the narrative around a revelation of the violence that is inherent to heteronormative culture but occulted by its position of dominance. This violence, which targets the figure of the innocent child, the standard-bearer of heterosexuality in its reproductive futurity, is, through the prophetic rage of the narrator, a child named Faldistoire, turned back upon the respectable adults who stamp out not only the lives of children but their nonnormative desires and impulses—their freedom. The novel puts forth apocalypse as a model for the work of literature itself—revelation that rends normative reality in order to replace it with something else.

The comparative inclusion and acceptance of LGBT+ people in the UK construction industry

The Equality Act of 2010 forbids discrimination based on gender and sexual identity; however, many lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary and people with gender expressions outside traditional norms (LGBT+) working in the UK construction industry experience hostility in the workplace. There has been a lack of research that focuses on LGBT+ professionals in construction, so this study investigates the topic and looks at how acceptance varies across different groups under the LGBT+ umbrella. The research uses thematic analysis to probe in depth the experience of 11 LGBT+ interviewees working in the UK construction sector. The study finds that majority of the LGBT+ employees have experienced some prejudice, each group in a unique way. Bisexual, trans and nonbinary people experience more discrimination than Lesbian and Gay people. Acceptance depends on workplace context. The respondents perceive construction sites more linked to harassment, discrimination and inappropriate comments toward the LGBT+ community than office environments. The visibility of senior LGBT+ employees and leadership of both LGBT+ and non-LGBT+ senior management are important for inclusion in organisations and for supporting junior LGBT+ employees. This study contributes to understanding of LGBT+ acceptance and raises issues that need to be addressed in the industry, challenging heteronormative culture.

Decolonial Excesses: Racial and Sexual Dissidence in Johan Mijail’s Amor Vegetal

Johan Mijail (1990), born in the Dominican Republic, stands out a trans performer who systematically seeks to destabilize heteronormative culture and colonial legacies ingrained in the politics of race, gender, and sexuality. In her most famous performance Amor vegetal (2015), the naked artist does headstands while inserting small branches, leaves or flowers in her rectum. By placing the “obscene” at the center of her work, Mijail creates alternative knowledge that challenges traditional values of homophobia, Catholicism, and fear of Blackness, all located at the heart of libidinal politics in Abya Yala. In Amor vegetal the artist creates a procto-poetics of the obscene through excess, which offers up the anus/ass as a transfeminist, decolonial, and countersexual axis.

Academic Librarian Search Committee Members Identify Inclusivity Concerns with On-Campus Interview Practices

A Review of: Houk, K. & Neilson, J. (2023). Inclusive hiring in academic libraries: A qualitative analysis of attitudes and reflections of search committee members. College and Research Libraries, 84(4), 568-588. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.4.568 Objective – To understand how academic librarian search committee members’ perceptions and attitudes affect the equitability and inclusiveness of the on-campus interview process. Design – Thematic text analysis of open-ended responses to short-answer questions from an online survey. Setting – Online survey conducted between February and March of 2021. Subjects – 166 academic librarians who had served on hiring committees for academic librarians in North America between 2016 and 2020. Methods – Participants for the 33-question survey were recruited through several academic library listservs and social media postings on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The researchers first individually reviewed and coded all responses for short answer survey questions, then reviewed the codes together. Finally, a thematic map was developed after the researchers reached a consensus on their shared approach to coding and generating clusters of meanings. Main Results – Six major clusters were identified through thematic coding of participants’ text responses concerning their experiences of on-campus interview practices as hiring committee members. These themes represented challenges to the inclusiveness of academic librarian searches, and included search committees’ treatment of the interview process as either intentional or situational tests (1), reliance on the ambiguously defined selection criteria of fit (2), experience with varying levels of commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, antiracism, and accessibility (DEIAA) values (3), frustration with prevalence of institutional bureaucracy throughout the hiring process (4), and uneven adoptions of inclusive hiring (5) or reflective practices (6). The researchers also noted a common respondent mistake of misinterpreting equal (i.e., identical) treatment of candidates as evidence of equitable interview practices. Conclusion – Findings from this study highlighted the importance of academic institutions and hiring committees adopting reflective practices to critically and intentionally incorporate DEIAA-informed practices in planning and conducting academic librarian searches. The authors also stressed the need to reduce possible biases in hiring practices favoring candidates who conforms to White, ableist, and heteronormative culture and values. Examples of these efforts included considering the necessity of each interview element for assessing candidate performances, proactively ensuring full accessibility of the interview itinerary, and operationalizing the definition of “fit” in assessing candidates’ abilities.

Aproximações à sexualidade na infância a partir da terapia ocupacional

Abstract This article consists of a bibliographical review that aims to describe the different factors that influence the development of child sexuality to understand it from Occupational Therapy (OT). The problem raised addresses the invisibility of the natural and normative components of sexuality in early and second childhood and how OT approaches these factors in its intervention. To carry out this bibliographic search, various databases and journals of Occupational Therapy were used, in order to find texts that were related to the objective and proposed problem, which were filtered according to exclusion and inclusion criteria. From the results it is obtained that there is limited academic information regarding how the components of child sexuality are directly related to the areas of work of the OT. From the foregoing, it is concluded that the discipline is recently incorporating the approach to this issue and the urgent need to reconstruct the conceptualization of child sexuality is raised, from a base of children's rights, moving away from the hegemony of a heteronormative culture, and adult centric. The different factors that influence the development of child sexuality are considered, understanding it not only as an occupation but also as a fundamental part of occupational identity, whose components are bodily autonomy, socio-affective development, pleasure and enjoyment, gender and occupational choices, which would guide the occupational therapy approach.

Dirt Jumps are Matter Carefully Placed, Maintained, and Governed

Dirt Jumps are Matter Carefully Placed, Maintained, and Governed

Self-Fashioning and Ambiguities of Revolution in Austin Clarke's "Initiation"

This is a paper on Austin Clarke’s short story from his collection of short stories titled, In This City. The story can be seen as being a part of Diaspora Studies, Immigrant Literature and Black Studies. The paper critically scrutinizes the short story based on the text and the context to argue how there was an absence of sustainable structures in the public sphere for black immigrant masculinities to sufficiently express themselves in a white heteronormative culture. Sociological ideas of Toby Miller and Erving Goffman are used to understand how black immigrant identities could only sufficiently be expressed in alternate sub-structures that remained isolated from the dominant white and heteronormative status quo. The central subject of “white space” of the issue is highly relevant to the paper’s exploration of how the systems of self-fashioning and revolution that exist in the public imagination are “incomplete” in their lack of reliability and sufficiency for black immigrants in Canada. Hence, their position in relation to aspirations of self-fashioning and revolution is one of ambiguity as the title of the paper itself states.
 
 The paper lays bare how these ambiguities are manufactured based on the chasm that exists between the ways in which the characters want to act and the ways of self-fashioning that society approves for them. It also explores how the systems of revolution are incomplete for them as there is an absence in terms of a revolutionary process that ensures stability and self-preservation.
 

A transmasculine experience of a career in outdoor recreation

The outdoor recreation industry is heavily influenced by a dominant, heteronormative culture—a culture that defines the experience not only for the participants but also the people working within the industry (Warren 2015; Holland, Powell, Thomsen, and Monz 2018). Those interested in advancing a career as a professional in the outdoor recreation industry, particularly related to outdoor leadership and adventure guiding, are often required to engage in a variety of unique living situations, arrangements, and contexts. This may include, for example, moving to rural and remote communities that sit adjacent to wildlands where many outdoor recreation organizations operate their programs. It may also require extended overnight trips with shared housing and rooming arrangements that require a level of intimacy with people they work with that is uncommon to most employment settings. Unique to this field, then, is how entangled personal identities are in the professional settings where one works with colleagues and serves their participants, a phenomenon that creates distinctive challenges to individuals who have non-dominant identities. This case study follows the career of a transmasculine outdoor recreation professional, Zach, as their career in the outdoor industry traverses multiple sectors (ski patrol to wilderness therapy) and geographic locations in North America (New Mexico to Alaska). Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with Zach, along with a photo elicitation exercise where he/they shared photographs that communicated a deeper meaning of his/their lived experience. In the sections below, you will learn about the experiences that Zach had through his/their career within the outdoor recreation industry and how his/their queer identity shaped his/their professional and personal experience in these spaces.

A Reparative Play in Dungeons & Dragons

This article examines the creation of queer rhetoric through role-play to find the reparative value that Dungeons & Dragons (1974-) can potentially provide the queer communities. My work focuses on the concept of reparative play, an adaptation of reparative reading which was first proposed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in 1995 (Sedgwick 2003). Reparative reading explores alternatives to heteronormative ideals through the act of reading. Instead of getting caught up in the problematic implications of a text, the alternatives are foregrounded (Sedgwick 2003, 137). Reparative play then expands reparative reading into the realm of play, where one explores the possibility for a sustainable queer livelihood through play (Vist 2018). I conclude with an observation of safety tools designed for tabletop RPGs, that enable reparative play.This work will be posited alongside an autoethnographic reflection of my own role-play experience as a means of demonstrating reparative play in practice. My work is founded on Sedgwick’s (2003) Touching Feeling, Kara Stone’s (2018) “Time and Reparative Game Design,” and Sarah Lynne Bowman’s (2010) The Functions of Role-Playing Games. These scholars observe role-play as a method of queer performativity and identity exploration. I propose that through the embodiment of a D&D character, set in a more accepting world, the players can enact reparative play to give an accurate and positive representation of themselves while promoting alternatives to heteronormative culture.

Mixed-sex peer groups and violent delinquency: understanding the separate and combined influence of mixed-sex peer groups, sex, and romance on violent delinquency

ABSTRACT Prior studies suggest peer group sex composition is an important correlate of delinquency, but these studies often conflate the influence of other-sex peers with that of romantic and intimate partners. This research seeks to understand the influence of other-sex peers as separate from, but related to, romantic activity and sexual debut. I find that while sexual and romantic activity predict mixed-sex peer group (MSPG) membership, they do not fully explain the positive relationship between MSPG membership and violent delinquency. Guided by literature on gender socialization and the institutionalization of heteronormativity, I argue this result can be explained as the result of a heteronormative culture that problematizes platonic, other-sex interactions and forces adolescents to maintain other-sex friendships in non-surveilled spaces.

Sexual Victimization Among Sexual and Gender Minoritized Groups: Recent Research and Future Directions.

Sexual victimization is a significant public health concern. Compared to heterosexual and cisgender peers, sexual and gender minoritized (SGM) individuals are at elevated risk for sexual victimization. Prominent theories suggest that this risk is due in part to the stigma SGM individuals face when navigating heteronormative cultures. The goal of this article is to review the prevalence, risk factors, and consequences of sexual victimization in SGM individuals. Studies continue to show that SGM individuals-bisexual and/or gender minoritized in particular-are at higher risk for sexual victimization. Little work has focused on risk factors, though recent research continues to highlight post-victimization disparities among SGM individuals. Emerging studies also point to theoretically informed factors that may influence victimization risk and recovery, including sexual and gender-related stigma. To inform prevention and intervention efforts, future research would benefit from streamlining assessment, methodology, and dissemination practices.

Queer and Disabled: Voices from People Who Have Been Hidden

ABSTRACT There is a reluctance to discuss sex and gender within the context of special education. Often, the assumption is that individuals with disabilities are asexual or too immature to have thoughts about sex and sexuality. Misconceptions about individuals with disabilities concerning sex and sexuality exclude this population from resources or avenues to explore this very important aspect of being human. Individuals with disabilities who also identify as queer face further isolation from support and a sense of community. The group of people who identify as disabled and queer struggle to find support from either of the intersectional Identities. The queer and disabled population is often excluded from the queer community because of a disability while at the same time being ostracized from the support of the disability community because they are queer. This article investigates data collected from Internet postings, involving individuals who self-identify as queer and disabled to examine issues and concerns faced by this unseen population. In these data, individuals expose their feelings about sex, sexuality, gender identity, access, and disability as they express their very personal accounts of living in two worlds. These analyzed narratives uncover the voices of an intersectional population who the ableist and heteronormative culture has ignored and pushed aside. The goal of an exploration into the perspectives and experiences of the project contributors is to provide insight that eventually leads to understanding and enables more effective support systems to be provided for individuals who simultaneously identify as queer and disabled.

Coping Strategies and Mental Disorders among the LGBT+ Community in Malaysia.

The LGBT+ community in Malaysia is vulnerable to mental disorders due to the pressures of being in a conservative heteronormative culture. This study aimed to study the association between coping strategies as well as the sociodemographic factors of LGBT+ individuals with mental disorders and quantify the occurrence of mental disorders among them. This study used a cross-sectional design. The self-rated Brief Coping Orientation to Problem Experienced Inventory (Brief COPE) and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) were used to this end. A total of 152 participants were recruited. Among the participants, 67.8% used mainly problem-focused coping strategies, 29.6% employed emotion-based coping, and 6.6% used avoidance coping. The prevalence of mental disorders in general and major depressive disorder was much higher than in the general Malaysian population (80.3% and 40.1%, respectively). The only sociodemographic factor that was significantly associated with mental disorders was bisexuality. Problem-focused coping is associated with fewer mental disorders, and emotion-based coping is associated with a higher prevalence of mental disorders. More studies need to be conducted to better understand and better manage the mental disorders of the Malaysian LGBT+ community.

Chinese Sexual Minority Students Experiencing Microaggressions: Implications for Sexuality Education.

The sexual prejudice faced by sexual minorities or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning/queer (LGBQ) students has been studied extensively around the world in the last two decades; however, it has only recently received attention from Hong Kong Chinese society, specifically in relation to this subtle form of prejudice. In the last decade, there has been an increase in the amount of literature examining the experiences of individuals encountering sexual orientation microaggressions, which are defined as discrimination or sexual prejudices manifested in subtle forms, particularly when directed toward socially marginalized groups, such as sexual minority students. The current study used a qualitative descriptive approach and semi-structured interviews to explore the themes of sexual orientation microaggressions experienced by Chinese sexual minority students. Several contextual themes to categorize microaggressions emerged: (1) the approval of heteronormative culture; (2) the use of heterosexist languages; (3) the assumption of sexual abnormality; and (4) the allowing of institutionally endorsed microaggressions. The results suggest that sexual minority students in Hong Kong experience diverse forms of microaggression in schools. The implications for the need to support LGBQ students are discussed, especially in addressing sexuality education in schools and the training of school professionals.

Mapping Queer Relationalities: An Exploration of Communication at the Edges of Cultural Unintelligibility

ABSTRACT Focusing on queer relationality, broadly conceptualized as minoritarian subjects’ modes of relating, engaging, and connecting with others in a symbolic and material landscape of erasure and cultural unintelligibility, this special issue highlights their communication practices and relational experiences. In so doing, it attempts to mitigate epistemic injustice, a wrong perpetrated against minoritarian subjects in their capacity as knower and legitimate source of their own experiences, by making their practices and experiences known and legible in mainstream heteronormative culture. The purpose of our article is to offer a preliminary mapping of queer relationalities, ranging from communication practices to modes of sociality and relational formations that exist at the edges of mainstream cultural unintelligibility. To do so, we first explore the vast domain of queer relationality. Next, we identify and examine multiple ways of thinking, doing, and imagining queer relationality. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical, methodological, and political implications of current work on queer relationality assembled in this issue and explore future directions for research.

A site of radical possibilities: Examining how a multigenerational counterspace promotedSTEMpersistence among undergraduate Women of Color

AbstractWomen from racially/ethnically minoritized communities remain significantly underrepresented at all levels of education in STEM. The pervasive white and heteronormative culture of the STEM environment has contributed to Women of Color feeling isolated, hyper‐visible, and invisible as they contend with racism, sexism, and gendered racial microaggressions. Scholars have found that counterspaces are key sites to support the persistence of Women of Color in STEM and ameliorate the negative psychological effects of navigating oppressive STEM milieus. Missing from the current literature is research on how counterspaces contribute to Women of Color's STEM persistence. This study sought to fill this gap in the literature by understanding the experiences of undergraduate Women of Color in the I CAN PERSIST STEM initiative, a multigenerational counterspace designed to support the holistic persistence of Women of Color in STEM. Steeped in the theoretical conceptualization of counterspaces, and using a case study methodological approach, we found that the multigenerational counter‐storytelling and support from Women of Color in STEM, as well as the embodiment of holistic wellness, and justice‐focused mentor‐teaching supported STEM persistence intentions among undergraduate Women of Color in the sample. Furthermore, participants described being able to reconcile their STEM identities with their need to be active in addressing and mitigating the inequities in their communities, while also prioritizing their well‐being and rejecting the STEM culture of overwork and burnout.

Negotiating mentoring relationships and support for Black and Brown early‐career faculty

AbstractIn this essay, we share historical and structural components of mentoring within institutions of higher education and grapple with technical and moral obligations of support. We argue for more humanizing approaches that embed personal, social, and cultural aspects of mentoring, and seek to disrupt the purposes of mentoring, and for whom? Using a critical approach, we promote justice‐oriented and equity‐driven models of mentoring that account for excessive teaching loads and service commitments for faculty at minority‐serving institutions and Black and Brown faculty at predominantly White institutions. Current promotion and tenure publish or perish models neglect the intellectual and scholarly contributions made through teaching and service and therefore hold the same level of expectations for engagement in and dissemination of research. We share our own stories as Faculty of Color navigating institutional structures during the promotion and tenure process, while also negotiating incongruent cultures of our personal and professional lives. Furthermore, we address the need for mentoring and networking within exclusionary spaces to support the productivity and critical research agendas of Black and Brown faculty that often challenge the white heteronormative cultures of our institutions, professional organizations, peer‐reviewed journals, and prestigious funding mechanisms. Implications of this essay include an acknowledgment of oppressive systems that early‐career Black and Brown faculty often navigate and a call for diverse mentoring programs and supports that conform with and validate our lives and needs. Furthermore, we provide recommendations on evidence‐based resources and approaches that are available to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty and science educators.

Our Town, Shakespeare 70, Ewing, New Jersey

<i>Our Town</i>, Shakespeare 70, Ewing, New Jersey

Amphibious Magical Realism? The Shape of Water as Cinematic Trauma Narrative

Amphibious Magical Realism? <i>The Shape of Water</i> as Cinematic Trauma Narrative