today in Stuff That's Happening Outside My Head
It's bizarre to me to see stuff I wrote about for the dissertation that got me my MA actually unfolding in the non-academic world. Mostly because I quickly realized that my framing of the matter had to be handled carefully, and considered for much more than a year in order to be fluid enough to be useful and adaptable, but then today I get another reminder that my own country's government apparently hasn't given it a second thought for generations. It's definitely a leap in legal terms, but at the same time, it's depressing that such a basic level of inclusivity should be considered a leap in 21st century America.
This is the America I want to see more of. Hooray for family members who care more about happiness than gender-restrictive social 'acceptability'.
Now THIS is interesting...
My very first thought is "and what about the families with two dads?" Followed by quite a few cynical responses to my own question, so I decided to look a bit further. Even government ministries recognize that the heterosexual partner of a child's mother or female relative is overwhelmingly likely to be the perpetrator of child abuse, and vastly more likely than an unrelated adult who identifies as gay or lesbian. The only shock here is that this is actually publicized by a federally affiliated body (okay okay, I've had my 800mg of snark today; that's enough). But why is it that when I search for statistics on child abuse in "gay" families, the HuffPo article is the most relevant thing that comes up? Even comprehensive studies with the purview of "lesbian AND gay" tend to stray very quickly to samples of ONLY lesbian households. The rest of the results are either fundamentalist Christian shit-trumpeting, or easy take-down critiques of faulty studies that say lesbian & gay parents DO abuse more, with the conclusion that "um no they probably don't" and not much else.
Even the Wikipedia article on LGBT parenting, sourced by people with way more time on their hands than I have this afternoon, kinda had to throw up its hands and go "welp, just not that much out there for research." But the raw source material is there; there are, one would think, just as healthy a number (for research purposes) of two-parent gay families in America as lesbian families. No?
Maybe not. Maybe the social mechanisms that keep rigid gender structures in place make it a bit easier to get the outcome of two women raising a child than two men, but that discrepancy becomes invisible when you label family make-up statistics as "lesbian AND gay" because it makes it easier for a representative to point at their county / state / region and say "See? We're tolerant enough." And maybe that nice, "normal" happy-family photo op of two people and a baby is a lot more attractive & less off-putting when the two people read as feminine-female. Lesbians don't abuse their kids? Well that's a relief, they must be Real Women after all. Most of the studies on gay dads that are kind of easy to find on the webbernets focused on how they handled the balance of child-rearing with (you probably guessed it if you haven't already read some) their careers. It has the overall feel of newsflash: men who behave like Women in the bedroom also raise children more like Da Womenz than Men-Men-Manly-Men. Ain't that cool?
It fits an overall heteronormative narrative a bit too snugly. This is all way-old-news in queer scholarship terms, but I just needed to rant about something today I guess. Conclusion - UCLA, or UCL, or anybody, let's get summore equivalent research up in here.
And now it's time out for lunch & crack: I leave you with ASDFKLJ;KLJS RUPAUL <3
This is the America I want to see more of. Hooray for family members who care more about happiness than gender-restrictive social 'acceptability'.
Now THIS is interesting...
My very first thought is "and what about the families with two dads?" Followed by quite a few cynical responses to my own question, so I decided to look a bit further. Even government ministries recognize that the heterosexual partner of a child's mother or female relative is overwhelmingly likely to be the perpetrator of child abuse, and vastly more likely than an unrelated adult who identifies as gay or lesbian. The only shock here is that this is actually publicized by a federally affiliated body (okay okay, I've had my 800mg of snark today; that's enough). But why is it that when I search for statistics on child abuse in "gay" families, the HuffPo article is the most relevant thing that comes up? Even comprehensive studies with the purview of "lesbian AND gay" tend to stray very quickly to samples of ONLY lesbian households. The rest of the results are either fundamentalist Christian shit-trumpeting, or easy take-down critiques of faulty studies that say lesbian & gay parents DO abuse more, with the conclusion that "um no they probably don't" and not much else.
Even the Wikipedia article on LGBT parenting, sourced by people with way more time on their hands than I have this afternoon, kinda had to throw up its hands and go "welp, just not that much out there for research." But the raw source material is there; there are, one would think, just as healthy a number (for research purposes) of two-parent gay families in America as lesbian families. No?
Maybe not. Maybe the social mechanisms that keep rigid gender structures in place make it a bit easier to get the outcome of two women raising a child than two men, but that discrepancy becomes invisible when you label family make-up statistics as "lesbian AND gay" because it makes it easier for a representative to point at their county / state / region and say "See? We're tolerant enough." And maybe that nice, "normal" happy-family photo op of two people and a baby is a lot more attractive & less off-putting when the two people read as feminine-female. Lesbians don't abuse their kids? Well that's a relief, they must be Real Women after all. Most of the studies on gay dads that are kind of easy to find on the webbernets focused on how they handled the balance of child-rearing with (you probably guessed it if you haven't already read some) their careers. It has the overall feel of newsflash: men who behave like Women in the bedroom also raise children more like Da Womenz than Men-Men-Manly-Men. Ain't that cool?
It fits an overall heteronormative narrative a bit too snugly. This is all way-old-news in queer scholarship terms, but I just needed to rant about something today I guess. Conclusion - UCLA, or UCL, or anybody, let's get summore equivalent research up in here.
And now it's time out for lunch & crack: I leave you with ASDFKLJ;KLJS RUPAUL <3