Beth E. Schneider

Coming Out at Work Bridging the Private/Public Gap

Combining research on work and occupations with that describing the process of “coming out” for homosexuals suggests several dimensions of work that affect the decision to reveal ones sexual identity in the context of work. Drawing on quantitative data on 228 lesbian workers, the analysis explores the relationship among workplace determinants, coworker sociability, and disclosure of sexual identity. Results indicate that among the dimensions examined, risk variables (income and working with children), socioemotional climate variables (gender structure and human service work), and prior loss of job due to disclosure have significant impact on decisions to reveal sexual identity to coworkers. Disclosure is context specific: The meaning of the pervasive and systematic influence of the economic domain on sociability, the management of identity, and the place of sexuality at work are considered.

Graduate Women, Sexual Harassment, and University Policy

When I personally was propositioned by a male faculty member, the man did not covertly try to use his position to pressure me. But I felt that he had taken advantage of my position as a grad student and as a T.A. After all, he could have served on future committees which would determine whether or not I received financial aid. He could also have tried to put damaging information in my departmental file and I, of course, could do nothing since the files were confidential (30, married, humanities).

The Reaches of Heteronormativity An Introduction

With the publication of the “The Traffic in Women” in 1975, Gayle Rubin posed a profound challenge to feminist theory by exposing the deep, historical interconnections between gender and compulsory heterosexuality. Implied in Rubin’s work was that the heterosexual imperative must become a centerpiece of feminist analysis, given that it was both cause and effect of a sex/gender system long used to structure and rationalize men’s subordination of women. Hence, for the Rubin of the 1970s, gender inequality and heterosexuality were inseparable forces, with gender referring not only to systematic identification with one biological sex but also to the routine enforcement of opposite sex desire. Close to a decade later, however, Rubin’s thinking about sexuality underwent a marked transformation, one informed by raging feminist sex wars, the beginning of a devastating AIDS crisis, and her own engagement in queer leather/BDSM subcultures. In “Thinking Sex” (1984/1993), she sounded a call for a new body of theorizing on sexuality, one not subsumed under the study of sex and gender. Expanding beyond conceptualizations of the hetero-patriarchal, this later work famously argues that the force of sexual normalcy cuts across multiple systems of privilege and oppression, is used to regulate all people, and frequently sits at the heart of national and global struggles. This special issue takes as its inspiration the productive tension between Rubin’s earlier work—focused primarily on how heteronormativity functioned in the service of sustaining a patriarchal gender binary—and her later work, which examines the mobility, adaptability, and far-reaching effects of “normal” sexuality. The past decade has witnessed a wealth of feminist research informed by both approaches and by developments

PUT UP AND SHUT UP: Workplace Sexual Assaults

In the deviance literature, sexual assaults at work have not been given the sustained attention that harm to property or violation of production guidelines has received. This omission suggests that sexual harassment is considered normative and that when women fail to accommodate this reality, it is the survivor rather than the perpetrator who is considered deviant. This article reports on 64 cases of attempted or completed rape in a sample of heterosexual and lesbian women workers in a wide range of occupations. Two atypical responses, quitting the job or filing a complaint as a result of a workplace sexual assault, highlight the process by which informal deviance defining occurs in everyday interactions at work.

Approaches, assaults, attractions, affairs: Policy implications of the sexualization of the workplace

This article is an analysis of the relationship between, on the one hand, empirical findings and theoretical perspectives on the sexualization of the workplace and, on the other, changes in public policy intended to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment as a problem for employed women. The sexualization on the workplace is conceptualized as all consensual and coerced sexual interactions at work, that is, both sexual harassment and sexual relationships. A summary of the evidence regarding both types of behaviors reveals that sexual harassment is experienced quite often by women workers; occasionally, women engage in sexual relationships with persons met at work. Harassment has significant negative consequences for the economic, emotional and physical condition of women, delimiting further an economic position for women which has already been affected severely by occupational segregation and employment discrimination. In assessing the impact of guidelines of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defining sexual harassment as sexual discrimination, issues are raised concerning the use and effectiveness of the guidelines by women workers, courts, and employers. It is argued that public policy on harassment is necessary and progressive but limited in its impact; the bulk of the problem, especially with regard to co-worker behavior, and the structural context of inequality are left relatively untouched.

Women and AIDS: An international perspective☆

Abstract AIDS poses unique problems and raises specific issues for women throughout the world. This article examines the status of women with AIDS and the prevention campaigns directed at them. It speculates on what the future may hold for women with AIDS, looking at prospects for healthcare and social support systems, and at how AIDS may affect the social and economic status of women. Several geographic areas are focused upon, and three distinct epidemiological patterns of HIV infection are presented.

Arguments, Citations, Traces: Rich and Foucault and the Problem of Heterosexuality

By any measure, in the decades since the publication of Rich’s essay ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’ and Foucault’s first book on the history of sexuality, Foucault has been taken up and utilized to a far greater degree than Rich. The collected literature in sexualities shows thousands more citations to Foucault’s work than to Rich’s essay by scholars writing in the traditions of cultural studies and/or queer theory and by virtually every young scholar working in the broad area of sexualities. References to Rich are absolutely and comparatively scarce; even those directly pondering heterosexuality, rarely refer to her essay. I wondered about the intentions of those who commissioned this symposium; why focus on such seemingly incompatible ‘landmark’ writers. But then, the same madness which seemed to overcome the Sexualities staff overtook me, who is at least momentarily obsessed with how the contributions of Rich and Foucault, but especially ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’, has fared. Foucault and Rich came to their specific writings on sexuality through different intellectual and political trajectories; they addressed different audiences, and expressed different intentions, which set the terms for their reception. Rich, already known as a political poet and essayist, was more directly engaged in political struggle at that time than Foucault, already known as a philosopher. Rich is writing to feminist scholars in a climate of intense political struggle, a poet in a context of a spirited, challenging, energized feminist movement, looking for historical and analytical tools. Major feminist intellectuals and activists challenged the essay as soon as it was published, rightly linking it with other writings of radical feminists, and Sexualities 11(1/2)