CSWS sponsored three talks during winter and spring 2023. We invited five of our graduate student affiliates below to share some thoughts on the talks’ themes.
February 16: “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America” with Margot Canaday, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University
Reflection by Leslie Selcer
February 16, 2023: A crowded room full of University of Oregon students, faculty, and community members greets Princeton historian Professor Margot Canaday, eager to hear about her new book Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America (2023).
Her project explores the “history of queer people on the job from the mid-20th century to the present” in the United States. Through more than 150 interviews, Canaday seeks to address two gaps in the historiographic research: firstly, the understudied aspect of the workplace itself as a site of queer experience, history, and struggle; and secondly, the understudied lives of queer women during this era, as most records focus on the persecution of gay men.
Canaday’s talk largely centers on the claim that, despite fear of job loss being a concern for queer workers during this period, dominant narratives about the Lavender Scare as a total purge of queer people in the workplace don’t fully capture the complex dynamics of gender, sexuality, and class during the second half of the 20th century. Canaday found that, although stories about being forced to hide one’s sexuality on the job were common, there were also many stories about queer workers whose employers and/or coworkers suspected (or knew) about their sexual orientation and tacitly agreed to look the other way.
More specifically, Canaday suggests that some employers valued the attributes associated with queer workers, including their relative vulnerability in the labor force and perceived lack of dependents—characteristics that were well suited to the emerging neoliberal capitalist framework. As a result of their precarity, queer people were often forced to tolerate working conditions that others would not, and frequently found themselves subject to underpaid, highly exploitative short-term labor arrangements. In this sense, Canaday argues that queer workers at the time were “harbingers of the post-Fordist transformation of work.”
Canaday’s research additionally reveals that, while better-paying jobs available in the “straight work world” usually required hiding, a kind of “queer work world” also emerged where individuals could be open about their identities and perform non-normative gender roles—albeit, often in lower-paying or otherwise unwanted jobs. Among her examples, she cites queer women working as mechanics and in similar trades.
In recounting the creation of the first dedicated AIDS ward in a San Francisco hospital, Canaday highlights the profoundly transformative experiences of the queer nurses and staff who cared for patients. The strong bonds between patients and workers in the ward fostered a sense of queer community, enabled holistic care, and challenged workplace hierarchies. To demonstrate this point, Canaday shared moving excerpts from a grief scrapbook created by the nurses, with entries ranging from memories of one lost patient who had a “great mustache” to another who “taught us all about dealing with pain.” Canaday characterizes this as a kind of “affective labor history” that reveals the workplace as a site of both struggle and deep meaning for queer people.
Overall, Queer Career offers a nuanced portrait of complicated queer experiences with work, and it will be of great interest to both labor historians and queer scholars.
—Leslie Selcer is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English.
Reflection by Jinsun Yang
Historian Margot Canaday gave a talk on February 16, 2023, at the Knight Law Center about her latest book, Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. Canaday is a legal and political historian with a focus on gender and sexuality in modern America. During her talk, she shed light on the overlooked history of queer people in American workplaces during the latter half of the 20th century.
Canaday began her talk by asking why the experiences of sexual minorities in the workplace have been little studied despite the significance of work in constructing identity and selfhood. Canaday demonstrated that conventional historians have largely ignored the experiences of queer individuals in the workplace, while queer researchers have assumed that workplaces are not places where LGBTQ+ people can reveal their identities. However, workplaces are diverse, and queer people’s work experiences are not homogenous. For example, lesbian breadwinners who do not conform to normative heterosexual femininity tend to work more than cisgender married women, as the workplace is a place they can belong and where their lesbian identity is less policed than elsewhere.
Canaday conducted extensive interviews with more than 150 individuals who identified as queer and had worked in various jobs dating back to the 1950s. The rich oral histories demonstrated the precarity faced by LGBTQ+ workers and their strategies in the workplace. Despite the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s in the US after the Second World War, plentiful employment opportunities were not given to LGBTQ+ people. The Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition on employment discrimination did not practically protect LGBTQ+ workers, who often earned less and had to accept unfair job conditions. There was an unspoken bargain between LGBTQ+ workers and their employers, who tacitly agreed not to problematize the workers’ identities. For employers, LGBTQ+ workers were attractive in maximizing employers’ profit; the majority of them were unmarried and thus provided a more flexible labor force. Additionally, queer workers could be paid less due to their unprotected status.
A critical argument presented in the talk was that the precarity encountered by LGBTQ+ workers became systematized in the workplace and affected a wider range of workers. The challenges and uncertainties faced by queer workers in the 1950s are now experienced by immigrant workers who are considered unmarried with presumptive non-citizen status. This finding raises questions about the intersection between LGBTQ+ workers and immigrant populations. An audience member asked if there were interviewees who were undocumented workers, to which Canaday replied no. It is likely that the dominant narrative of the interviewees was largely grounded in white, cisgender gay and lesbian people with legal citizenship, although the demographics of the interviewees were not explicitly discussed. As a non-citizen East Asian with broken English, I often feel that these identities overshadow my queer identity, and it is hard to imagine that my queer identity would be a significant factor at my workplace rather than my race, language, and non-citizen status.
While appreciating Canaday’s insightful analysis of the experiences of queer people in the workplace in modern America, it is important to define keywords more explicitly such as work and workplaces and to acknowledge the limitations of the interviewee demographics. The complexity of LGBTQ+ work and their work experiences demands that we recognize these limitations.
—Jinsun Yang is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and recipient of a 2021 CSWS Graduate Student Research Award.
March 13: “The Right’s Gender Wars and the Assault on Democracy” with Arlene Stein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University
Reflection by Ivy Fofie
Arlene Stein’s lecture focused primarily on the relationship between anti-queer laws and democracy and feminist resistance. She argues among other things that the purpose of anti-queer legislation in some parts of America is to deepen divisions among minority groups and to sow mistrust in science, higher education, and the state. She calls on feminist activists to fight anyhow they can to ensure our collective safe futures.
At a point during the lecture, I asked myself, why are we still fighting the same issues after so many years of supposed “liberation”? I was fascinated to hear about all the laws in states like Florida and Texas that roll back years of feminist activists’ work for queer communities. I was even more surprised that Oregon, which is considered a safe state for queer persons, still has anti-queer laws that threaten the stability of queer persons.
As a scholar of feminist media, I believe people’s perceptions about queer persons are shaped by what they see in media through (mis)representations of queer persons. As Stein notes, many people think heterosexuality to be the default and campaign for banning laws protecting queer rights because they think that their resources as working-class Americans are redirected to fund the lifestyles of queer persons. This is particularly true for trans persons seeking gender affirming medical procedures. But in reality, how true is this?
I couldn’t help but think about how all these laws affect queer persons in Global South countries such as Ghana, where I come from. In the wake of the overturning of the Roe v Wade legislation, many anti-queer persons argued for stringent anti-queer laws that supervised arbitrary arrests and detentions and in some cases the deaths of queer persons. Their rhetoric was that the US, whose democratic infrastructure they imitate, rolled back queer legislation and so they are emboldened to do the same. I wonder if the US takes into consideration that many anti-queer laws have rippling transnational effects.
I was very happy when Stein proposed showing up at school boards and defending post offices as ways of speaking up as feminist activists. I want to add that for oppressive regimes for queer persons such as Ghana, digital spaces are safe and effective and, as Stein rightly puts it, join one or create one. Whatever you do, fight back.
—Ivy Fofie is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Communication and recipient of a 2023 CSWS Graduate Student Research Award.
Reflection by Giovanni Francischelli
One of the most important expressions of our current “Cultural Wars” is what Arlene Stein refers to as “Gender Wars.” These are the moral debates around gay and trans people’s rights, including the instruction on gender and sexuality in schools. Conservative (traditional) forces aim to prohibit or criminalize gender discussions in the classroom, spreading hate that culminates in violence against women and queer people. On the other hand, progressive (organic) forces, including feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, support the open discussion of matters of intimate life and work to take out of the shadows the diversity of gender expressions.
“Cultural Wars” refers to political-ideological struggles in divided societies. It implies moral debates not only about gender but also antagonistic viewpoints on abortion, the category of women in society, demarcation of Indigenous territories, Black Lives Matter, migration, people with disabilities, abolitionism, veganism, and more. The term, in its modern sense, was coined by James Davidson Hunter in his 1991 analysis of how an alliance of conservative forces was established in a battle against their progressive counterparts for control over American culture.
In recent years, in different societies, we witnessed episodes of Gender and Cultural Wars. They are not only a moral discussion of controversial topics. These new battles for knowledge are also related to the current crisis in democratic systems. They are battles about the role public institutions play in our society, including the church, the school, the State, the police, the family, cultural organizations, and so on. These institutions make democracy possible, and improving them with critical thinking that accounts for antiracism, diversity, and queer theory makes them more representative. Gender Wars are battles of ideas over the politics of body and sexuality, and those who believe queer rights should be protected must join the fight to open new possibilities for human freedom and existence.
—Giovanni Francischelli is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Communication.
April 21: “Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics” with Krystale E. Littlejohn, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon
Reflection by Nishat Parvez
Attending Dr. Krystale Littlejohn’s book talk on Just Get on the Pill was a profound experience that deepened my understanding of the complexities of reproductive health. Dr. Littlejohn, an esteemed associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, shared her insights on the societal expectations, gender dynamics, and intersectionality that influence reproductive health decisions.
One of the key takeaways from Dr. Littlejohn’s book talk was the concept of gender-compulsory birth control, where partners are expected to provide contraception without meaningful discussions or considerations of individual autonomy. This resonated with my own experiences and highlighted the need for open and honest conversations with partners about shared responsibility in family planning. It made me reflect on the importance of reaffirming agency in making informed choices about reproductive health and challenging traditional gender norms.
Dr. Littlejohn’s talk also delved into the intersectionality of race, highlighting the unique challenges women of color face in accessing and using contraception. This brought attention to the need for an intersectional approach in reproductive health research and policy, acknowledging the complexities and nuances of reproductive health experiences among diverse populations. It motivated me to incorporate an intersectional lens in my own research on political communication and reproductive justice.
However, the talk also raised concerns about the persistent gender inequality and systemic barriers in reproductive healthcare. It emphasized the urgency of ongoing advocacy and activism to promote reproductive justice for all individuals, regardless of gender, race, or social location. It reinforced the importance of promoting gender equality in all aspects of reproductive health, from access to contraception to decision-making power and autonomy.
Dr. Littlejohn’s book talk on Just Get on the Pill was a thought-provoking and eye-opening exploration of reproductive health. It challenged my assumptions, deepened my understanding of gender dynamics and intersectionality in reproductive health, and emphasized the need for ongoing advocacy for reproductive justice. I am grateful for the opportunity to have attended this book talk.
—Nishat Parvez is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Communication.