How/Can Psychology Support Low-Income LGBTGNC Liberation?

Author(s):  
Michelle Billies

Findings from a participatory action research project conducted by the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC) are used to explore the questions of whether and what kind of psychology can support racially and ethnically diverse, low-income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LGBTGNC) liberation. Such issues cannot be understood through lenses of gender and sexuality alone and mainstream psychology—as well as the larger LGBT movement—has tended to ignore the formative ways oppressions are made to work together. Intersectionality and homonationalism are necessary concepts in a psychology of low-income, racially and ethnically diverse LGBTGNC liberation as well as an understanding of “resistance” that broadens to include building community among individuals as well as solidarity and coalition with sister social movements. Freedom of movement and the right to housing are explored as human rights relevant for a low-income LGBTGNC psychology of liberation.

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Billies

The work of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC), a participatory action research (PAR) project that looks at how low income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LG-BTGNC) people survive and resist violence and discrimination in New York City, raises the question of what it means to make conscientization, or critical consciousness, a core feature of PAR. Guishard's (2009) reconceptualization of conscientization as “moments of consciousness” provides a new way of looking at what seemed to be missing from WWRC's process and analysis. According to Guishard, rather than a singular awakening, critical consciousness emerges continually through interactions with others and the social context. Analysis of the WWRC's process demonstrates that PAR researchers doing “PAR deep” (Fine, 2008)—research in which community members share in all aspects of design, method, analysis and product development—should have an agenda for developing critical consciousness, just as they would have agendas for participation, for action, and for research.


1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Frisby ◽  
Susan Crawford ◽  
Therese Dorer

In contrast to traditional approaches to research, participatory action research calls for the active involvement of the community—including both the beneficiaries and providers of sport services—in defining research problems, executing interventions, interpreting results, and designing strategies to change existing power structures. The purpose of this paper was to analyze a participatory action research project designed to increase the access of women living below the poverty line and their families to local physical activity services. A framework developed by Green et al. (1995) formed the basis of the analysis. To place the analysis in context, the historical origins and theoretical assumptions underlying participatory action research were addressed. The case of the Women's Action Project demonstrated how the process can result in a more inclusive local sport system and, at the same time, provide a rich setting for examining organizational dynamics including collaborative decision-making, community partnerships, power imbalances, resource control, resistance to change, and nonhierarchical structures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 263235242110426
Author(s):  
Pamela Grassau ◽  
Arne Stinchcombe ◽  
Roanne Thomas ◽  
David Kenneth Wright

Background and Rationale: The Compassionate Communities movement emphasizes the importance of illness, disability, dying, caregiving, and grief across the lifespan and highlights the communal responsibility of caring for one another. There is a need to recognize and incorporate the needs of diverse communities within this movement and research on dying, caregiving and grief. An important axis of this diversity is related to individuals’ sexual orientation and gender identity. Methods: As part of the early phases of Healthy End of Life Project Ottawa, a Compassionate Communities, community-based, participatory action research project, we held focus groups with older members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit communities. Nine older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit people participated in the focus groups (mean age = 72 years). Data were analysed using an inductive, reflexive thematic approach. Results: Through an iterative analysis process, we identified themes related to lifecourse experiences of trauma, the need for safety within care contexts, the importance of relationships and connection, as well as participants’ ability to ask for and receive help. A core tenet of Compassionate Communities involves responding to the needs of diverse communities with respect to aging, end-of-life, and grief. Our findings emphasize the importance of incorporating the voices of diverse sexual and gender identities and promoting health equity within Compassionate Community initiatives.


Author(s):  
Lien Fan Shen

Issues of sexuality and gender equity in schools are often entangled with education reforms in Taiwan. Since 1949, when martial law was enacted by the Chinese Nationalist Party, schools had exercised disciplinary power over and exhibited forms of gendered oppression on students’ gender and sexuality. Since martial law was lifted in 1987, Taiwan has undergone several educational reforms. Taiwan’s education system was criticized for its focus on standardization, memorization, and lack of creativity, thus reformers pushed a more holistic approach, and gender equity education was included through the implementation of the Gender Equity Education Act in 2004. In general, gender equity education reforms were catalyzed by a series of social events, including two honor students’ suicide; students’ protesting a hair ban (how it is referred to in Taiwan) and gender-specific uniforms; a gender-nonconforming boy’s accidental death on campus; and anti-LGBTQ cases in a 2018 referendum to eliminate gender equity education in schools. These events exemplified the complexity of discursive practices that encompass struggles of gender and sexual minority individuals in schools, negotiations between the legislative process and public opinion, and media attention on and representation of adolescent gender and sexuality in Taiwan. Taiwan’s movements and progression of gender equity education may be seen as a magnifier through which issues of gender and sexuality are revealed not only in schools but also in society at large.


2020 ◽  
pp. 132-159
Author(s):  
Kim T. Gallon

Chapter 5 details how Black Press news coverage produced a black public sexual sphere that allowed readers to debate homosexuality and gender-noncomforming expression’s position in early-twentieth-century black communities. As the Black Press worked to transform negative images of blackness, they held homosexual life and gender-nonconformity up as a spectacle that could not seamlessly fit into notions of African American respectability. Nonetheless, regular coverage in the Black Press proved that editors believed that readers enjoyed reading articles and viewing images about female impersonators and gay men. In presenting readers’ responses to this coverage, chapter 5 draws attention to instances of contest and negotiation between diverse African American readers as they struggled to understand the intersections between race, gender, and sexuality.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Kahn ◽  
Paul C. Gorski

<p>Challenges confront lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender public school teachers or those who are perceived as such or who desire to be open about their sexual orientations or gender identities or expression. Teachers who do not conform to gender and sexual orientation norms currently are and historically have been the subject of persecution, urban myths, and general hysteria—part of bigger efforts to normalize heterosexuality and cisgender-ness through the development of a distinctive “exemplar” related to who teachers should be. We examine the related historical  and legal context of gender and sexuality in schools and then offer suggestions regarding how to redress the lingering impacts of gender- and heteronormativity.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Mari Rysst

This article discusses the phenomenon of popularity and its implications for gender construction, social inclusion, and gender equality among girls in two ethnically diverse contexts in Norway. At one field site, girls of immigrant origin were a majority, at the other they were a minority. Based on detailed ethnographic methodology and participant observation over time, this study shows that the crucial dimensions of popularity overlap with “economies of dignity” and vary according to whether the ethnic Norwegians are in a minority or majority position. The dimensions of popularity, which include the importance of attracting the male gaze, are connected to consumption. My results suggest that consumption influences girls’ construction of gender, and may have negative consequences for the inclusion of immigrant girls when in a minority, because they often live in low-income families. The article concludes that the overlap between the dimensions of popularity and the tokens of value of the economies of dignity underlines the importance of how power, through popularity, works among children. One implication of this power is that neither ethnic Norwegian girls nor girls of immigrant origin appear to live in a climate of gender equality.


2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Pritchard

What difference does it make, ethically speaking, to be part of an action research project involving youth? How are participants supposed to act towards one another? How are they supposed to act toward others- research subjects, peers, adults in positions of authority, community members- who they encounter in the course of their projects? Youth Participatory Action Research (Youth PAR), as reflected in this volume's various projects, raises ethical issues that deserve its supporters' attention. Action researchers who are serious about both achieving their objectives and doing the right thing in the process are bound to come across certain kinds of ethical challenges in their activity. This essay will try to illuminate some common and troubling challenges.


Author(s):  
Mark R. Warren

Willful Defiance documents how Black and Brown parents, students and members of low-income communities of color organized to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in their local schools and built a movement that spread across the country. The book begins in the Mississippi Delta where African American families were some of the first to name and speak out against the school-to-prison pipeline and challenge anti-Black racism, exclusionary discipline policies that suspend and expel students of color at disproportionate rates and policing practices that lead students into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The book examines organizing processes in Mississippi, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other localities, showing how groups led by parents and students of color built the power to win policy changes to reduce suspensions and expulsions by centering the participation of people most impacted by injustice and combining deep local organizing with resources from the national movement. It shows how an intersectional movement emerged as girls of color and gender nonconforming students asserted their voice, the movement won victories to remove or defund school police and sought to establish restorative justice alternatives to transform deep-seated racism in public schools. The book documents the struggle organizers waged to build a movement led by community groups accountable to people most impacted by injustice rather than Washington-based professional advocates. It offers a new model for federated movements that operate simultaneously at local, state, and national levels, while primarily oriented to support local organizing and reconceptualizes national movements as interconnected local struggles whose victories are lifted up and “nationalized” to transform racially inequitable policies at multiple levels.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Naeimi ◽  
Jón Ingvar Kjaran

Abstract In the homosocial space of the all male military service, (hetero)masculinity and gender normativity are promoted and bravery and warrior mentality are highly valued. On this basis, policing gender and sexuality is a relevant issue, aiming to reward heteronormativity and hyper masculinity and marginalize non heterosexuality and gender nonconforming performances. In the Iranian context, since the Iran Iraq war (1980–1988), military service has produced a feature of militarized (hetero)masculinities through the cult of martyrdom. It enforces soldiers to stand up against the enemy, be willing to seek martyrdom and sacrifice themselves in order to protect the Islamic Iranian homeland. It is a symbol of entering adulthood and during that time young men are expected to embody the official ideology which revolves around heteronormativity and strict gender norms. In this context, the focus of this paper is the embodied experiences of those young conscripts who do not embody the (hetero)masculine ideal, because they are either non heterosexual or do not fit into the strict regime of gender. Drawing on ethnographic data, and policy documents, this paper shows how the idea of the (hetero)masculine ideal has been translated into practice through the dispositif of the sarbazi and how some young Iranian non heterosexual men try to resist conscription while others try to find ways to carve out a liminal heterotopic space during their military service.


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