Dana Berkowitz

Gay Men and Surrogacy

This chapter provides an overview of the scholarship on gay men who have become parents through the assistance of a surrogate mother. Gay fathers choosing surrogacy are at the cutting edge of pushing society to reassess its assumptions and constructions about sex, reproduction, and parenthood. I begin this chapter by outlining some of the guiding theoretical perspectives that have been used to frame the scholarship on sexual minority parenting and assisted reproductive technologies. Next, I detail the different types of surrogacy arrangements and the demographic profiles of those gay men who use surrogacy. I review the few yet promising studies on gay fathers and surrogacy, exploring the rationales behind the men’s choice to construct their family using this pathway; the relationships that develop between expectant fathers, surrogate mothers, and their children; and finally, the consequences for family formation. Then, I briefly discuss the emerging trend of reproductive outsourcing, consider the current legal issues facing gay fathers who use surrogacy, and conclude by offering suggestions for research, theory, policy makers, and practitioners.

Activist Parenting and GLBTQ Families

ABSTRACT This article utilizes examples from four different feminist, constructionist, sociological research projects to illustrate the centrality of activist parenting to current understandings of GLBTQ-related parenting and GLBTQ family studies. Specifically, we suggest that GLBTQ-related parenting can be better understood if we pay attention to how it is political, relational, and specific. We begin the article by reviewing key work about activist mothering. Next, we discuss research about parents in PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) to show how a form of activist parenting is central to their narratives. We then briefly discuss three other research examples of GLBT-related parenting to further illustrate how different forms of GLBTQ-related parenting today are political, race/class/gender/sexuality specific, and related to each other.

“She Works Hard for the Money”: Drag Queens and the Management of Their Contradictory Status of Celebrity and Marginality

This article reports an ethnographic study of drag queens who perform in Miami Beach. Drag queens are marginalized, both economically and socially. However, drag enables some gay men to emphasize and manipulate aspects of femininity for the means of earning attention and income and garnering situational power. Grounding their empirical findings in symbolic interaction, identity, and performance theories, the authors argue that drag queens employ nuanced strategies to negotiate their contradictory status of admired yet alienated performers. The authors use observational and in-depth interview data to explore how participants experience, cope with, and challenge their social marginality. The authors then detail the rewards of drag, focusing on the allure of the transformation, situational power, and income. A subjective understanding of drag reveals that although marginalization is a serious issue, the rewards of drag can be empowering. The authors argue that identity work emerges as a link between marginalization and rewards.

Gay Fathers’ Involvement in their Young Children’s Lives

As the contemporary fathering and family landscape grows increasingly more complex, a growing body of scholars are beginning to expand knowledge on the social matrix of men’s relationships with children by exploring the experiences of gay men as potential and active fathers. This chapter provides an overview of the existing empirical and theoretical scholarship on gay fathers and their involvement with children. In addition to reviewing the dominant themes in the literature, we detail the changing legalities facing gay fathers and their families, suggest implications for policy makers and practitioners, and offer practical resources for educators.

The Ways Women Age: Using and Refusing Cosmetic InterventionThe Ways Women Age: Using and Refusing Cosmetic Intervention, by BrooksAbigail T.New York: New York University Press, 2017. 279 pp.

verge across the two societies. Ameeriar convincingly presents Canada as a multicultural state operating under a colonial logic that perpetuates systematic ascriptive inequalities. This uncovering of racializing processes in the experience of Pakistani immigrant women is a useful empirical contribution to sociology. That said, the book is limited theoretically due to its insufficient engagement with sociological literature on the racialization of immigrants. So despite the clear contributions the book makes to our understanding of complexities and inequalities within Canadian multiculturalism, it is not clear how the work challenges or advances existing theories and concepts such as racial formation, segmented assimilation, or racialized incorporation. It is also not clear how the case of Pakistani immigrant women challenges or advances existing understandings of marginalization within Canadian scholarship on race and immigration. Nevertheless, this is an important case study that will be of great interest to sociologists interested in immigration and citizenship, racialization, precarious work, gender, and the South Asian diaspora.