Queering the academy : UK academics’ negotiation of heteronormativity at work

Abstract

Whilst ‘queering’ theory has been accepted in higher education institutions, queering the organization is not, and more research is needed on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) and heterosexual academics’ experiences working in Higher Education (Rumens, 2016a). In this manner, research omits to examine how LGBTQIA academics are marginalized and the ways in which sexuality and gender are inextricably “linked within a dominant heterosexual masculinity” in which academics are judged (Fisher, 2007:512). Research drawing on queer theory is thus needed in order to expose the oppressive systems conditioned and (re)produced by ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, also termed heteronormativity, within academic institutions (Ozturk and Rumens, 2014). Although queer theory recognizes multiple and intersecting identities, it often tends to “reinforce simple dichotomies between heterosexuality and everything ‘queer’” (Gamson and Moon, 2004:52) hence neglects and subsumes differences in terms of marginalized sexualities (Angelides, 2006) and how non-normative sexualities can render gender as a ‘stable’ category unstable (Butler, 1999). Given the lack of research ‘queering’ the academy, the aim of the study was to understand how academics navigate working life in workplaces where discourses around ‘heterosexuality’ are the implicit norm. Using snowball sampling to facilitate recruitment of participants, this study is based on 30 qualitative semi-structured interviews with academics identifying across the sexuality and gender spectrum working in UK higher education. All of the transcribed interviews were analysed for emerging discourses relating to LGBTQIA academics’ workplace experience and heteronormativity. Additionally, to explore how sexualities negotiate the heterosexual/homosexual binary and the possibility to deconstruct essentialism, Willig’s (2013) Foucauldian discourse analysis was utilised. Rather than challenging normative ideals of gender and sexuality, the study found academia, as an heteronormative institution, (re)produces knowledge, practices and norms that marshals academics ‘with a sexuality’ into a ‘queer friendly closet’ which restricts opportunities to ‘bring sexuality to work’. This was found to present particular challenges for self-identified bisexual academics that further have to negotiate the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy and its underpinning norms rendering non-binary sexualities ‘invisible’. From a queer theoretical perspective, this poses problems for the opportunity to deconstruct essentialism and ‘queer’ the academy away from binary and normative thinking.