Lain A. B. Mathers

None of the Above: Strategies for Inclusive Teaching with "Representative" Data.

This conversation explores emerging debates concerning teaching to and about marginalized populations often left out of “representative” data sets. Based on our experiences studying, teaching, and belonging to some of these unrepresented populations, we outline some strategies sociologists may use to transform the limitations of data sets traditionally labeled as representative into tools for delivering core sociological concepts. In so doing, we argue that sociologists may respond to increasing critiques of “representative” data by using these critiques to facilitate critical thinking skills and methodological awareness among students. In closing, we encourage sociologists to consider the challenges and opportunities presented by increasing awareness of unrepresented populations within our classrooms and the broader social world.

Contemporary Religion and the Cisgendering of Reality

This article outlines a generic process in the reproduction of inequality we name cisgendering reality. Based on 114 responses from transgender Mormons and systematic reviews of religious, transgender, and inequalities scholarship, we demonstrate how contemporary American religions cisgender reality by (1) erasing, (2) marking, and (3) punishing transgender experience in ways that reproduce conceptions of reality predicated on cisnormativity. In conclusion, we argue that examining processes of cisgendering reality may provide insight into (1) transgender religious experience, (2) transgender secular experience, and (3) cisnormativity embedded within many contemporary religions.

Helping quantitative sociology come out of the closet

This essay offers some ways quantitative sociology may embrace increasing scholarly and public recognition of sexual and gender diversity. Specifically, we suggest that increasing (1) public awareness and debate concerning sexual and gender fluidity, (2) calls for sociologists to become engaged in public debates, and (3) awareness of gender and sexual nuances underlying the majority of social phenomena create an opportunity for quantitative sociology to begin answering longstanding calls for more empirically grounded measurements of sexualities and gender. To this end, we use our experiences designing quantitative measurements of sexual and gender diversity to provide options for quantitative sociology to better capture the empirical complexity of gender and sexuality within the contemporary world by expanding gender options on survey instruments and expanding sexual identification methods on survey instruments.

“This Isn’t Just Another Gay Group” Privileging Heterosexuality in a Mixed-Sexuality LGBTQ Advocacy Group

This paper examines how members of a southeastern LGBTQ advocacy group privileged heterosexuality through group interactions. Based on twelve months of fieldwork, we analyze how LGBTQ members and their heterosexual allies traded power for (heterosexual) patronage by (1) heterosexualizing their group, (2) sanctifying allies, and (3) privileging parenthood. In so doing, all the members, regardless of their intentions, ultimately reproduced societal patterns of sexual inequality within the context of their group. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding (1) the ways LGBTQ people and their heterosexual allies negotiate heterosexual privilege, (2) the ways they construct the meaning and status of heterosexual allies, and (3) some ways dominant groups’ affiliation with subordinate groups may inadvertently facilitate processes of inequality reproduction.

The Limits of Homonormativity: Constructions of Bisexual and Transgender People in the Post-gay Era:

This article addresses limitations of homonormativity in the pursuit of sexual and gender equality. Based on 20 interviews with cisgender, heterosexual Christian women, we demonstrate how even people who support same-sex marriage and some recognition of cisgender lesbian and gay people as potentially moral individuals may continue marginalization of transgender and bisexual people in their interpretations of gender, sexualities, and religion. We outline two generic processes in the reproduction of inequality which we name (1) deleting and (2) denigrating whereby people may socially construct transgender and bisexual existence as unnatural and unwelcome despite gains for cisgender lesbian and gay people. We argue that examining the social construction of bisexual and transgender people may provide insight into (1) limitations of homonormativity in the pursuit of sexual and/or gender liberation, (2) transgender and bisexual experience, and (3) the relative absence of bisexual and transgender focused analyses in sociology to date.