Session 1: Sexual Citizenship

6th Global Conference

Tuesday 10th November – Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Normalization and the Good Sexual Citizen; Dissidence and the Refusal to Comply
Julius .K. Kaggwa
Support Initiative for People with, DSD (SIPD), Uganda

“In Uganda, the expression of sexuality is greatly influenced by spiritual, cultural, and moral concerns. However, while as a society we hugely base our social and economic appreciation of others on a rigid premise of what is ‘sexually normal’ and acceptable in an African cultural context, in practice there is extensive fluidity in the way we experience or define pleasure in a sexual context. A case in point is the eccentric sex languages and symbols displayed in contemporary African music and entertainment which due to ‘public demand’ have taken centre stage in defining what is seductive or appealing given that even the most conservative factions take a significant degree of pleasure in these sexual expressions culturally considered aberrant albeit not openly admitting to this pleasure. Additionally, many religious fundamentalists have abandoned traditional vestments and adopted modes of dress that communicate an unspoken intention to appeal sexually. Also many African men depict a feminine aura by the jewellery and suits they wear that are culturally unorthodox. The question is whether these practices are just a taking to modern fashion trends and not an implicit expression of sexuality and identity fluidity. We need to further ask whether we limit these expressions to the public stage and that they in fact don’t represent our intimate sexual desires and behavior. Evidence of non conforming sexual and gender identities in recent years challenges us to revise the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what is not possible; to shift the paradigm from an obsolete static sexual identity culture to appreciation of the fact that sexuality in the 21st century Africa is both diverse and dynamic where ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ are as interwoven and subjective as our anatomical make up.”

What’s Wrong with ‘Sexual Citizenship Ethics’?
Tom Claes
University of Ghent, Belgium

No abstract is presently available

Forms Of Resistence To The Organization’s Symbolic Heteronormative Order
Beatrice Gusmano
Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy

In order to produce a significant contribution to our understanding of how sexual identity is constructed and managed at work, I will present five challenges that nonheterosexual workers pose to Italian public and private workplaces in order to counteract to the heteronormative hegemony of organizations.

The empirical background is based on 34 narrative interviews conducted to self-defined nonheterosexuals who had came out with at least one person in their workplace.

Following the stories’ analysis about challenging the symbolic gender order in organizations (Gherardi & Poggio, 2007), I identified five ways of resisting to the heteronormative order of workplaces, taking into consideration three features characterizing non-heterosexuals’ narratives about work life (the degree of visibility, the commitment showed towards work, and the centrality of sexual identity in the workplace):

1) the challenge through professionalism characterizes men occupied in managerial positions that give value to a sharp division between private and professional sphere. They usually try to silence their sexual identity at work.

2) the challenge through peripheral symbolic presence is performed by workers that have an high degree of commitment and try to manage both professional and relational satisfaction by coming out only with colleagues that they trust.

3) the challenge through temporary symbolic presence is characterized by a low commitment. These workers have come out with everybody in the organizational context because they hope for a surpassing of gender and sexual identity.

4) the challenge made possible by constant symbolic presence aims to completely change the organizational culture through practice and explicit reference to nonheterosexual way of living. Visibility has been reached gradually after evaluating how workplace could have reacted to coming out.

5) the challenge as struggle is carried out by workers that take daily a stand towards discrimination.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)