Jane Ward

“Not all Differences are Created Equal” Multiple Jeopardy in a Gendered Organization

The dictate in feminist intersectional theory to not “count oppressions” is difficult to reconcile with the experience of many lesbians of color that “not all differences are created equal” inside social movement organizations. Meso-level factors, such as organizational structure and sociopolitical environment, may result in the perception of individuals or groups that one form of structural inequality is more oppressive than others. The author focuses on the experiences of lesbian staff and clients at Bienestar, a large Latino health organization in Los Angeles focusing primarily on HIV/AIDS prevention and education. This study demonstrates that oppression can be experienced as additive and that counting and ranking oppressions may remain a common practice and important political strategy in the context of some social movement organizations. This article also responds to the need for more research that builds on the gendered organizations approach by examining some of the factors that contribute to change in organizational gender ideology and practices.

White Normativity: The Cultural Dimensions of Whiteness in a Racially Diverse LGBT Organization:

This article builds on examinations of whiteness in organizations by considering how white normativity—or the often unconscious and invisible ideas and practices that make whiteness appear natural and right—is sustained even in organizations that are attentive to structural factors. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article critically examines the racial identity and culture of the Center, a Los Angeles lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organization with a national reputation for multiculturalism, a visible presence of people of color in leadership, and a staff of more than 50 percent people of color. Despite these indicators of racial diversity, the organization also maintained a local reputation among queer people of color as the white LGBT organization in Los Angeles. The author demonstrates that the Centers formal and public attempts to build and proclaim a racially diverse collective identity, along with its reliance on mainstream diversity frames available in the broader environment, became the very practices that employees of color identified as evidence of the white normative culture of the organization.

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

Gender Labor: Transmen, Femmes, and Collective Work of Transgression

This article takes femme/FTM sexual relationships as a point of departure to consider gender itself as a form of labor, or to illustrate how gender subjectivities are constituted by various labors required of, and provided by, intimate others. Analysis focuses on the work that women do in relationships with transgendered men, specifically the work that they do to validate and celebrate their partners’ masculinity. ‘Gender labor’ extends beyond the work people do to achieve our own gender coherence; it also describes emotional, physical, and sexual care-taking efforts aimed at suspending self-focus and helping others achieve the varied forms of gender recognition they long for. Though gender labor is both given and received by all people, the author argues that it weighs down most heavily on feminine subjects, the people for whom caring, sex and other ‘labors of love’ are naturalized, expected or forced.

Producing `Pride' in West Hollywood: a Queer Cultural Capital for Queers with Cultural Capital

This paper applies Pierre Bourdieus theorization of class positioning and cultural capital to a case study of conflicts between the working class organizers of an urban LGBT pride celebration and the local gay press, gay government and gay professional community. I conclude with a discussion of two developments in the LGBT movement more broadly, that have implications for how professionalism, good taste and skill are being defined by powerful stakeholders in pride festival organizing: a) the growth of gay capitalism and, b) the disappearance of a broad-based LGBT movement ideology. According to Bourdieu, judgments of taste and skill serve the interests of power by constantly creating new categories of distinction, and thus new class-based means of competition and ownership. The case presented here suggests that these trends have begun to destabilize the grassroots ownership of pride celebrations and naturalize class-based evaluations of the tastes and skills of event organizers.

From ‘Black people are not a homosexual act’ to ‘gay is the new Black’: mapping white uses of Blackness in modern gay rights campaigns in the United States

This paper examines the ways in which rhetorics of Blackness and civil rights have been deployed by Whites positioned on both sides of modern gay rights discourse in the United States. The authors argue that the contemporary deployment of Blackness by both gay and anti-gay movements concurrently is linked to the longstanding use of race on both sides of anti-gay referendum and initiative campaigns since the late 1970s, as well as to the even longer history of the racialization of homosexuality in Europe and the United States. The paper offers a brief history of the late nineteenth-century racial construction of homosexuality, which sets the stage for the later pairing of political discourses linking Blackness and homosexuality in the twentieth-century. Drawing on research of gay rights referendums and initiatives from 1977 to 2000, the paper then demonstrates how White religiously-motivated anti-gay activists relied upon divisive arguments about whether homosexuality is ‘like race’ to secularize and legitimize their campaigns. Furthermore, the authors show that White gay activists have adopted varying strategies as the lesbian and gay movement has evolved – from coalitional approaches that refused simplistic ‘like race’ arguments at the height of the gay liberation period, to color-blind ‘human rights’ frameworks in the 1990s, and more direct uses of race in the 2000s that mirror religious right rhetoric. The paper concludes with a discussion of the origins and effects of ‘gay rights versus Black rights’ discourses more broadly, and their implications for contemporary gay marriage debates.

A New Kind of AIDS: Adapting to the Success of Protease Inhibitors in an AIDS Care Organization

Using a case study analysis of Heath House, a Santa Barbara residential care facility for People Living With HIV/AIDS, this paper examines the effects of protease inhibitors on the life of an AIDS care organization. The case of Heath House reveals that when care providers are committed to static conceptualizations of an epidemic and its “victims,” and have defined the value of their work in relationship to these conceptualizations, new technologies threaten organizational identity and stability. While prior research on goal displacement has emphasized the process by which an organizations members lose sight of their original goals to achieve greater efficiency or legitimacy, this study offers an example of the process by which members adhere to original goals and ideologies, even when change becomes necessary for organizational survival. This article examines tensions between residents and staff at Heath House that occurred when the very institutional culture that allowed it to thrive became anachronistic as AIDS changed. I explore problems of internal dissent and external problems of legitimacy.

Born This Way: Congenital Heterosexuals and the Making of Heteroflexibility

In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsey stunned Americans by revealing that 37 per cent of his male subjects had had one or more homosexual experiences and that 46 per cent had ‘reacted sexually’ to men. American psychologists and sexologists, such as Kinsey, have long been interested in the homosexual practices of heterosexual men. However, in the late 2000s, following the release of the hit Hollywood film Brokeback Mountain,1 and amid rising fears about men ‘on the down low’, it became clear that speculation and concern about the meaning of such practices was hardly limited to psychology journals. The homosexual practices of heterosexual men came under the scrutiny of the US news media and became the spectacular material of television and print media exposes. As I discuss below, the new visibility of straight men’s homosexual desire in turn produced a demand for ‘sex experts’ who could explain to the American public the psychological, cultural, homosocial and institutional causes behind the ‘down low phenomenon’.

Radical Experiments Involving Innocent Children: Locating Parenthood in Queer Utopia

Contemporary parenthood is a condition bound up with heteronormative futurity. The child symbolizes the future itself, with its ostensibly limitless and unknowable possibilities. The child’s future can go “either way,” good or bad, normal or queer, gratifying or terrifying. Following in the traditions of their time and place, parents set the stage for a future they hope will be healthy and prosperous, offering them a return on their investment. As sociologist Sharon Hays has suggested, social expectations regarding adult investments in children proliferated in the late twentieth century as the ideology of “intensive mothering” took hold. Current generations of parents are taught by parenting experts that adult/child relationships must be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive in order to ensure children’s future success.2