Heteronormative Paradigm Research Articles

Surviving Exile. Queer Displaced People’s Lived Experiences of Aid, Risks and Coping in Kakuma

This paper examines the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ displaced individuals in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Drawing on situated knowledge and relational agency, it delves into how queer people experience the humanitarian-aid system on-site, what risks they encounter, and how they exert agency to cope with the prevalent challenges of day to day life. Findings reveal that, in a country context where same-sex relations are illegalized and queer people criminalized, those displaced face heightened risks. They are confronted with the heteronormative paradigms inherent to the humanitarian-aid system, ones resulting in their neglect and denied access to much-needed assistance and protection. Structural and physical violence such as discrimination, exclusion, harassment and threats of murder exacerbate unrelenting fears and tangible risks in the camp. To navigate these challenges, they employ diverse individual and especially collective coping strategies, creating safe spaces for mutual support, exchange and hope.

Queer Muslim Piety: The Hijab Practices of LGBTQ Muslims in Boston

Abstract: This article examines how queer Muslim pieties are constructed through sartorial practices, specifically, wearing hijab, and what these pious subjectivities suggest about gender, piety, authority, and identity more broadly in the American Muslim community. In Muslim communities, hijab is imbued with heteronormative assumptions and is often thought about in terms of modesty relating to hetero male desire. Yet people who fall outside heteronormative paradigms also choose to cover, suggesting there are alternative meanings to lift up. Based on interviews with three queer Muslim women in Boston, the author found that through donning hijab, queer Muslim women mark degrees of intimacy and privacy with others, protest and resist normative forces within Muslim and LGBTQ cultures, and secure for themselves a gendered and visible Muslim identity, while simultaneously subverting gender norms. This article shows the creative ways Muslim women have negotiated religious and secular authorities to imagine new, playfully pious possibilities for themselves and the Muslim community.

Queer Muslim Piety: The Hijab Practices of LGBTQ Muslims in Boston

Abstract: This article examines how queer Muslim pieties are constructed through sartorial practices, specifically, wearing hijab, and what these pious subjectivities suggest about gender, piety, authority, and identity more broadly in the American Muslim community. In Muslim communities, hijab is imbued with heteronormative assumptions and is often thought about in terms of modesty relating to hetero male desire. Yet people who fall outside heteronormative paradigms also choose to cover, suggesting there are alternative meanings to lift up. Based on interviews with three queer Muslim women in Boston, the author found that through donning hijab, queer Muslim women mark degrees of intimacy and privacy with others, protest and resist normative forces within Muslim and LGBTQ cultures, and secure for themselves a gendered and visible Muslim identity, while simultaneously subverting gender norms. This article shows the creative ways Muslim women have negotiated religious and secular authorities to imagine new, playfully pious possibilities for themselves and the Muslim community.

From the Sky to the Streets, and Back

Abstract Against the Eurocentric, heteronormative paradigms that continue to structure analysis of post-9/11 global warfare, this article asks what it means to decenter the view from the imperial war room, illustrated most poignantly in the 2016 thriller Eye in the Sky. Highlighting the role played by the Kenyan state in the ongoing war against the Somali militant group al-Shabaab, it takes seriously the African subjects who co-constitute geographies of war making in East Africa today, from the political and business elite who normalize militarized masculinities and femininities, to the African troops whose affective and violent labor sustains war making in Somalia. Far from a celebration of subaltern agency, the article engages the notion of a “subaltern geopolitics” that is mindful of asymmetries of power and that foregrounds ambiguous positions of marginality that are neither dominant nor resistant. Attention to entanglement disrupts binary analytical paradigms of global/local and masculine/feminine, and calls for a deeper consideration of collaboration and complicity.

The History Bubble

The History Bubble

Development of Bisexual Identity.

Bisexuality is the sexual, romantic, emotional and physical attraction that a person experiments for both of the biological sexes (men and women). Since the Venezuelan society is built under a heteronormative paradigm sometimes is considered that those sexualities, that drift apart from the social reality, are not comprehended thus generating a reject. Therefore, we conducted a study that was titled "Construction of Bisexual Identity in Venezuelan Adults: 'It is Not a transition, I Just Simply Am Like That'" that had as a general objective the understanding of the bisexual identity in Venezuelan adults. This article contemplates one dimension of this major project degree. In-depths interviews were carried out to willing participants and the obtained data were analyzed with the constant comparative method following an emerging design. Among the results four major categories were described, however, in this article we will be only focusing on the development of the bisexual identity.

“It wasn't feasible for us”: Queer Women of Color Navigating Family Formation

ObjectiveThis intersectional analysis was designed to explore how lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women of color understand and navigate family formation decisions.BackgroundFamily formation research centers White heterosexual parents and heteronormative pathways (i.e., adoption and cryobank purchased sperm). Choosing a known donor may be a way for LBQ women of color to circumvent a process that has not been responsive to their needs.MethodOur qualitative analysis of 13 interviews of LBQ parents in families of color examined (a) the processes through which queer women of color arrive at the selection of a known donor, (b) the characteristics that queer women of color prioritize in donor selection, and (c) how women's interactions with external institutions (e.g., cryobanks) and histories of oppressive racialized family formation practices influence their decision‐making.ResultsParticipants arrived at the selection of known donors because the desired donor characteristics were unavailable through commercial sperm banks, particularly with regard to the intersection of a person who could be known and mirrored specific racial, ethnic, and cultural characteristics. This decision was highly connected to their individual identities and the intersections of those identities.ConclusionLBQ women of color may choose known sperm donors and seek to minimize their use of biotechnology because they do not consider other alternatives (e.g., bank‐acquired sperm) desirable or feasible.ImplicationsFindings invite the reimagination of a cryobanking system that operates on a relational rather than biomedical model and the need for services that practice outside of White, heteronormative paradigms.

LGBTIQ+ Perspectives in Institutional Contexts: Challenging Heteronormative Paradigms in the Workplace

Gender, Work & OrganizationVolume 24, Issue 6 p. 675-677 BOOK REVIEW LGBTIQ+ Perspectives in Institutional Contexts: Challenging Heteronormative Paradigms in the Workplace Luigi Maria Sicca, Corresponding Author Luigi Maria Sicca lumsicca@unina.it Search for more papers by this authorDavide Bizjak, Corresponding Author Davide Bizjak davbiz@unina.it orcid.org/0000-0003-2219-6983 Search for more papers by this authorAntonio Fruttaldo, Corresponding Author Antonio Fruttaldo antonio.fruttaldo@unina.it orcid.org/0000-0002-6282-3761 Search for more papers by this author Luigi Maria Sicca, Corresponding Author Luigi Maria Sicca lumsicca@unina.it Search for more papers by this authorDavide Bizjak, Corresponding Author Davide Bizjak davbiz@unina.it orcid.org/0000-0003-2219-6983 Search for more papers by this authorAntonio Fruttaldo, Corresponding Author Antonio Fruttaldo antonio.fruttaldo@unina.it orcid.org/0000-0002-6282-3761 Search for more papers by this author First published: 11 October 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12188Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume24, Issue6November 2017Pages 675-677 RelatedInformation

“From the Heart”

What are the non-monetary dimensions of selling sex? This article offers a cultural approach to the question of sexual labors, drawing on field observations and interviews in a community of gay men in Dakar, Senegal. Removing the notion of sexual labors from the stigmatized zone of “survival sex,” I explore the affective, extramonetary dimensions of sexual labors. The men in this study labor not simply to make money. Instead, I argue that against a highly gendered cultural backdrop, one where male admiration is often written synonymously with money and gift giving, gay men experience a validation of their self-worth and homoerotic attraction through sexual labors. The extent to which they derive recognition from sexual labors not only subverts the gendered heteronormative paradigm, but also is paradoxically conditioned by it. Beyond sexual labors, however, this article also engages a broader question—how do gay men forge a positive sense of self amidst a variety of oppressive forces? The answer is not only through sexual labors, but also through initiation into a gay identity and community, an ethos of generosity and solidarity, kinship ties, and an ethic of sexual discovery, each taking shape alongside these labors.

Gay pride and prejudice in the Pacific

Industrial relations research has traditionally been captured by a heteronormative paradigm, and little research generally has been focussed on employment issues in the Pacific. Employment rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and intersex persons in the Pacific is important for numerous reasons, not the least on basic moral and decency grounds and also for the role that employment takes in enabling a quality of life and in developing economies. This article only looks at the issues facing, lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (LGB), and excluded those defined by gender identity. The legal status of homosexuality across 22 Pacific nations is identified as well as the existence of anti-discrimination laws that would protect LGB workers in the workplace. This information is then contrasted with country membership of the International Labour Organisation as an agency that may provide support or bring pressure to improve the workday life of LGB employees in these countries. This is an important area for research as the employment experience of all workers contributes to the overall wellbeing of both the individual and business, and ultimately society.

Breaking down barriers: exploring the potential for social care practice with trans survivors of domestic abuse.

There is increasing recognition that domestic abuse takes place outside the heteronormative paradigm of social life. This paper presents a discussion of the findings of doctoral research which explores trans people's experiences of domestic abuse, their social care needs and whether these are met by domestic abuse agencies. This paper foregrounds debate on the intersections of domestic abuse, trans communities and social care provision as this research, and previous studies, suggests that trans survivors do not seek out or benefit from social care intervention. Qualitative data, collected via narrative interviews, were collected during 2012 from participants mainly located in the United Kingdom (two participants were based in the United States). A total of 24 interviews were undertaken with trans people (n = 15) and social care practitioners (n = 9). Data were examined using a voice-centred relational technique. The findings reveal that barriers are multiple and complex but work could be undertaken to encourage help-seeking behaviours. Barriers include expectations of a transphobic response and 'Othering' practices; lack of entitlement felt by trans people; lack of knowledge/misunderstandings about trans social care needs; heteronormative bias of existing services; and practitioner attitudes fixed to notions about gender as binary. The paper ends by proposing a framework for practice with trans survivors which incorporates a person-centred, narrative approach.

Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland by Hal Gladfelder (review)

GLADFELDER, HAL. Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. 311 pp. $54.95. Hal Gladfelder's deeply researched and thoughtfully assembled biography of John Cleland makes good on its promise reopen [his] writing in all its messiness of being written (4). Cleland here is an eccentric figure who strategically navigated eighteenth-century print culture and politics. Gladfelder's exhaustive work with primary documents provides a welcome supplement to William Epstein's 1974 biography, which dealt sketchily with Cleland's career beyond Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Gladfelder does devote substantial time in the third and fourth chapters to this most famous of Cleland's works. The first of these situates the novel within the discourse on sodomy, suggesting Cleland and his contemporary Thomas Cannon, author of Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify'd, explored the category not to vilify same-sex intercourse but to portray erotic desire as a range of non-normative sexual behaviors. (Cannon's pamphlet is extant only in legal transcriptions, and Gladfelder's ample quotations provide unprecedented access to this lost work.) In these writings, eros turns the body topsy-turvy, and desire and its objects are distanced from restrictive moralistic and heteronormative paradigms (77). Gladfelder's reading of Cleland's sodomy scene, which has received so much critical attention, is the most persuasive and textually attentive treatment I've encountered, acknowledging echoes of anti-sodomy stances but showing ultimately that its continuities with heterosexual scenes challenge eighteenth-century distinctions between natural and unnatural desire. The fourth chapter argues that Cleland's prose fiction. Woman of Pleasure in particular, unseats familiar conventions of the early English novel in favor of experimenting with new instructive modes: repetition and folly. In sum, Gladfelder provides a thick and comprehensive account of Woman of Pleasure, parsing its internal sexual deliberations with as much care as its engagement with literary culture more broadly. But perhaps most importantly, this book examines Cleland's entire career, from his first Bombay clerical writings to his late linguistic and political tracts. Rather than try to account for the sources and works covered--Gladfelder's research in this regard is exhaustive--I'll offer here what I found to be the most transformative revelations. First, Gladfelder's work with Cleland's correspondence brings to life an articulate, bold, erratic, even volatile personality. Advocacy for Indian citizens in 1730s Bombay, humble self-defense following Woman of Pleasure's publication, desperate applications to his mother for an early inheritance--his various legal negotiations show him to be alternately persuasive, self-pitying, and ferocious. …

LGBTQ Capacity Building in Health Care Systems: A Social Work Imperative

Working within a diverse array of health care settings, social workers encounter a variety of client populations, many of whom we are well prepared to serve. We have specialties in working with children, adolescents, and older adults with mental illnesses, substance use issues, or particular health care concerns such as HIV. As a profession, we have begun to pay attention to racial and ethnic health disparities that may cut across each of these groups and have actively engaged in efforts of cultural competence. However, we have not, until recently, paid attention to the health disparities and particular health care needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) population. Estimates of the size of the LGBTQ population in the United Sates vary, with Kinsey's (1948) 10 percent estimate holding almost mythical status. However, a recent estimate generated by Gary Gates at the Williams Institute, who cross-compared a number of different population surveys, put the number of LGB individuals at approximately 3.5 percent of the population and transgender individuals at 0.3 percent (Gates, 2011). Gates noted that this amounts to 9 million LGBT Americans, a figure roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey (p. 1). Given this prevalence, it is likely that all social workers will encounter LGBTQ clients on their caseload whether or not they overtly identify their orientation or gender identity. Throughout history the dominance of a heteronormative paradigm has resulted in LGBTQ individuals experiencing stigmatization and discrimination. This discrimination may manifest as verbal or physical assaults (Kosciw, Greytak, Diaz, & Bartkiewicz, 2010) or as policies that render these individuals' relationships invisible (such as not being eligible for a life-partner's social security benefits). Having been socialized in a cultural environment that is at best heteronormative and at worst homophobic, health care providers frequently make assumptions of heterosexuality in the questions they ask their patients. In turn, patients anticipate that disclosure of sexual orientation will negatively affect the care they receive (James & Platzer, 1999). The impact of stigmatization of and discrimination against LGBTQ individuals is the potential for uneven care when accessed, or avoidance of care altogether, resulting in disparities emerging within health issues because many unaddressed social, contextual, psychological, developmental, interpersonal, and environmental factors can produce deleterious outcomes (Mayer et al., 2008)). The extent of these disparities is sufficient cause for concern that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has elevated sexual orientation from a noted disparity in their Health People 2010 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) objectives to a target group for concern and improvement in Healthy People 2020 (see http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/ topicsobjectives2020/det:ault.aspx). Social workers have an important role to play in helping to address this charge. Social work's values, as articulated by the NASW Code of Ethics (NASW, 2008), call on us not only to honor the dignity and worth of all persons and to promote social justice, but also to more actively challenge social injustice, noting that social workers should pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people (p. 5). Social workers, therefore, have an ethical imperative to increase their capacity to provide culturally competent services to clients of all sexual orientations and gender identities, shedding assumptions of heterosexuality and creating more inclusive practices. They should also actively engage in the LGBTQ competency training for all health professionals. INEQUALITIES, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND NEGATIVE HEALTH INDICATORS Recently, the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations set for a road map detailing requirements for the inclusion of LGBTQ loci within health care settings (Joint Commission, 2010). …

Baroque Flair: Seventeenth-century European Sapphic Poetry

Early modern women poets across Europe and at least one colony enlisted Petrarchist terms, often with a self-aware, parodic twist. Some examples, considered here, include (first) self-portrait poems that serve to critique not only the lyric speaker/portrait subject’s imperfect face or physique, but the very phenomenon of Petrarchist lyric objectifications of female love objects, and (second) love poems addressed by women to other women. By applying a theoretical grounding that combines feminist, lesbian, and queering approaches, we can bring to these poems a reading that is alert to moments when they reproduce, or rework, the kinds of gendered discourse and heteronormative paradigms that we find in better-known male-authored poems. The essay concludes with a survey of the kinds of cultural work performed by these texts in their ideological, religious, political, and poetic contexts. As cultural premises changed, the poems moved from widespread presence into illegibility or erasure from literary historiography.

Diversidade sexual no contexto escolar: percepção e atitudes dos educadores

This is a qualitative study with the purpose of analyze perceptions and attitudes of primary school educators, regarding the sexual diversity in the school scenario. The Focus Group was applied to twenty-three educators of two public schools of Cajazeiras–PB. The obtained empiric material was submitted to the Technique of Content Analysis, thematic modality. The supposed tranquility which some educators accept homo-affective behaviors hides a diversity of practices and feelings. The posture of the educator is directed to re-(orient) the child/adolescent, attributing the sexual orientation of this individual as disease and /or deviation of behavior. The procedures are permeated with punitive insistence regarding which male or female forms should be established as rigidly opposite, reinforcing the hetero-normative paradigm. It calls to the reflection about the consequences and damage of the social intolerance, signing that the facing of the discrimination is founded in the adoption of public policies that defend the equality of rights and respect to the sexual diversity.

Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y cabareteras on the Transnational Stage (review)

Reviewed by: Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y cabareteras on the Transnational Stage Jessica Lynam Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y cabareteras on the Transnational Stage. University of Texas Press, 2010. by Laura G. Gutiérrez. 1. Sex in the performing arts—Mexico. 2. Lesbians in the performing arts—Mexico. 3. Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.)—social aspects —Mexico. 4. Women entertainers—Mexico. 5. Women performance artists—Mexico. In this book, Gutiérrez employs the notion of “unsettling comforts” to call attention to the disruptive, transgressive quality of the queer cabaret and performance artists she studies. Such disruptions or transgressions challenge heterosexual national and nationalist culture, provoking audiences to question heteronormative paradigms. Additionally, Gutiérrez uses the concept of “unsettled comfort” to refer to the in-between space inhabited by queer artists. The author suggests that “in betweenness, particularly for minoritarian subjects, may, in fact, be the home address of all those involved in a queer world-making project” (20). This discomfort or unsettled comfort, she argues, opens a productive space for analysis. Performing Mexicanidad is divided into two parts, the first of which concerns the ways in which several contemporary Mexican and Mexican American visual, performance and video artists interrogate national identity and its relationship with gender roles by appropriating and re-imagining feminine icons of Mexican national identity. For instance, Gutiérrez explores the ways in which Mexican and Chicano/a visual [End Page 220] artists have deployed the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe, re-inscribing her with new meanings, as well as the critical response to such re-inscriptions. Other icons of femininity such as the china poblana, the rumbera figure popularized in the golden age of Mexican melodrama, and the female subjects of ranchera music standards become subject to re-visioning by the cabareteras Astrid Hadad, Jesusa Rodríguez, Liliana Felipe and Regina Orozco, as well as the video artist Ximena Cuevas. These artists’ performances serve to parody and interrogate the masculinist and heteronormative discourses that figure prominently in the Mexican national identitary, opening a space for a queer Mexican identity while inscribing the artists in a long-standing tradition of rule-bending women performers. In the second part of the book, Gutiérrez profiles the avant-garde Chicana performance artist Nao Bustamante and Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas, demonstrating that both women avail themselves of dominant mass-media forms in order to undertake “queer performative interventions.” Bustamante and Cuevas move beyond the traditional, contained spaces of the museum or stage in their artistic production, such as when Bustamante appears in character as a sexual deviant on the Joan Rivers show or Cuevas spools out a fabricated homosexual love affair with another artist for the benefit of a tabloid magazine. The author’s “coda” to the book describes how Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe have left behind the enclosed space of the cabaret in order to take to the streets. She argues that in abandoning the cabaret, these artists transcend social, sexual and political borders to contest neoliberal policies of the Calderón administration through public performances and acts of civil disobedience. Drawing on a broad base of performance studies, queer and feminist theory, Gutiérrez also clearly delineates and acknowledges the challenges and limitations inherent to using live art as an object of study. Perhaps because of such limitations, Gutiérrez’s close readings of Astrid Hadad’s “Heavy nopal” aesthetics and Nao Bustamante’s stage performances become vital to familiarize readers with pieces of cultural production that are ephemeral by nature and often unavailable for reviewing. This is especially true because Gutiérrez uses these and other anecdotal performances to illustrate methodological concerns raised at the intersection of sexuality, language, politics, nationalism and art, and in order to unsettle further comforts: those conventions that she considers as having, until now, largely conformed scholarly production on literature, film, and material culture of Latin America. In general, as a call to acknowledge the careful and detained study of embodied performances as important avenues for scholarship in Latin American cultural studies, Performing Mexicanidad succeeds most where it leads by example. Jessica Lynam Christopher Newport University Copyright © 2011 The Board of Regents of the University of Arizona

Boats are for boys: queering maritime archaeology

From the masculine struggles of ancient and historic seafaring to the demands and Boys' Own, action man ethos of shipwreck archaeology, maritime archaeology remains entrenched in the Western, androcentric, dualistic, heteronormative paradigm. Just as boat-building, sailing, fishing, trading, exploring and colonizing are prescribed as male activities (and male according to modern, Western constructs), maritime archaeology remains masculine in its approach, techniques and interpretation. By failing to acknowledge this, maritime archaeologists are restricting their reconstructions of past maritime societies. Moreover, they are further maintaining the perception of maritime archaeology as having a minor, subsidiary role within the wider discipline of archaeology. Consequently, there is a need for more rigorous and reflexive archaeological interpretation, for the production of self-critical, social archaeologies and for the queering of maritime archaeology.