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Submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree Master of Community-Based Counselling in Psychology at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, July 2018 / Polyamory is a relationship practice rooted in the belief that it is possible to pursue meaningful romantic, sexual, and/or emotional partnerships with more than one person simultaneously. This research sought to explore how South African psychologists construct polyamory, as international research suggests polyamory is produced as problematic within mental health contexts. Six Gauteng-based psychologists were recruited using purposive sampling. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews. Interview transcripts were analysed using Foucauldian informed critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal that a discourse of damage informs psychologists’ constructions of polyamory: Polyamorists are presented as pathological, primitive and infantile individuals. Their relationships are constructed as risky, complicated arrangements which oppress women and break up homes. These constructions justify the need for intervention and reproduce Western, Christian, cisgender and heterosexual monogamy as the pinnacle of ‘healthy’ and ‘real’ love. These findings form part of an initial critical engagement with polyamory in the South African context. / XL2019

At the heart of this dissertation project is my interest in the internal conflict that emerges in the mundane navigation and maintenance of relational and contextual penalty and privilege. That is to say, I am interested in how individuals maneuver their/our concurrent identity/ies as oppressor and oppressed. I argue that this simultaneous identity is a holistic embodiment that demands complex maneuvering and that requires our vigilant attention. In addition, I am interested in the critical potential of such maneuvering for activism. In this vein, I introduce my intent to queer the limits of identity research in critical intercultural communication research while contributing to, and drawing on, what others have referred to as queer intersectionality (Bilge, 2012; Rosenblum, 1994). I envision queer intersectionality as an ontological modality that yields heuristic potentiality that can aid critical intercultural communication researchers explore the ways in which we embody a simultaneous oppressor-oppressed identity. In order to understand queer intersectionality as an ontological modality, I offer embodied contexts that give rise to oppression and power in given and fleeting moments. Halualani and Nakayama (2010) remind us that “critical work recognizes that there is no theory in advance and no social process of culture without some theoretical sense-making; it travels through a trajectory of theory from and towards context” (p. 9). Centralizing the directed attention upon the significance of context, I intend queer intersectionality to be an embodied modality that critical intercultural communication researchers can use to explore and theorize simultaneous oppressor-oppressed identity performances and critically envision the co-constitutive relationship between privilege and disadvantage.

In this project, I endeavor to bridge the gap between these two by analyzing "Latinx" as a symbol that functions distinctly when employed as a personal or group identity. My argument for this thesis can be broken into two main parts: its significance as an identity, and its tangibility. As a group identity, I argue "Latinx" represents a social movement for liberation, visibility, and minority allyship. While this is not unconnected to its personal meaning, individual embodiment of the term involves the performance and realization of the intersectional. In other words, it gives those with overlapping queer and Latina/o identities a space to exist without compromising the validity of either identity. In addition to this, I argue that instead of representing the unknowable, "Latinx" is made tangible through the community it names. As such, the term itself, its symbolism, and controversial reception have all only been viable because of the agency of the individuals that have adopted "Latinx" as a way to communicate their identities. My analysis considers the relation between these two parts in order to understand "Latinx" as a symbol and community.

This research explored the experiences of lesbian and queer-identified women who are actively grandparenting in the context of a same-sex relationship. Most research investigating the experiences of grandparents takes a heteronormative focus and fails to acknowledge the possibility that grandparenting can take place within the context of a queer family structure. Thus, this study attempted to initiate a discussion among feminist, queer, and gerontological researchers to fill a gap in the literature on grandparenting within a same-sex context. A qualitative study of four lesbian/queer-identified couples was conducted. In semi-structured interviews, couples were interviewed together and asked questions about their involvement in the everyday lives of their grandchildren, how homophobia and heterosexism impacts their relationships with their grandchildren, and how these experiences vary (if at all) with the nature of the grandmothers’ relational ties (e.g., biologically related or non-biologically related). While the sample included some variation in terms of incomes, backgrounds and cultures, all four couples are linked into informal lesbian/ queer community networks and live in large or mid-size urban areas in southern Ontario – a relatively progressive jurisdiction with respect to same sex marriage and human rights legislation. Findings suggest that there are differences in the experiences of lesbian grandmothers based on varying relational ties and that non-biological women are particularly affected by changes in the socio-legal context and by homophobia and heterosexism within the extended family. Non-biologically related grandmothers consider their role as a grandmother to be ‘chosen;’ that is, they made a conscious decision to identify as a grandmother. Non-biologically related grandmothers also did not anticipate becoming grandmothers because they were not biological mothers; thus, the opportunity to become a grandmother contributed to a life course journey that they did not expect to have. By grandparenting openly and honestly within the context of a same-sex relationships, participants strive to prepare their grandchildren for an increasingly diverse Canadian demographic by modeling a healthy and loving ‘non-traditional’ family and by demonstrating the importance of accepting differences. With respect to implications, the findings suggest that supporting non-biological parents and grandparents will be a critical step for service providers and policy makers who are working with LGBTQ families. At the level of direct practice, these family experiences underscore the importance of recognizing and affirming these non-traditional family forms. In many settings, social work practitioners have and can seize opportunities to question, confront and revisit organizational and professional practices that fail to acknowledge them. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW) / This research explored the experiences of lesbian and queer-identified women who are actively grandparenting in the context of a same-sex relationship. Most research investigating the experiences of grandparents takes a heteronormative focus and fails to acknowledge the possibility that grandparenting can take place within the context of a queer family structure. Thus, this study attempted to initiate a discussion among feminist, queer, and gerontological researchers to fill a gap in the literature on grandparenting within a same-sex context. A qualitative study of four lesbian/queer-identified couples was conducted. In semi-structured interviews, couples were interviewed together and asked questions about their involvement in the everyday lives of their grandchildren, how homophobia and heterosexism impacts their relationships with their grandchildren, and how these experiences vary (if at all) with the nature of the grandmothers’ relational ties (e.g., biologically related or non-biologically related). While the sample included some variation in terms of incomes, backgrounds and cultures, all four couples are linked into informal lesbian/ queer community networks and live in large or mid-size urban areas in southern Ontario – a relatively progressive jurisdiction with respect to same sex marriage and human rights legislation. Findings suggest that there are differences in the experiences of lesbian grandmothers based on varying relational ties and that non-biological women are particularly affected by changes in the socio-legal context and by homophobia and heterosexism within the extended family. Non-biologically related grandmothers consider their role as a grandmother to be ‘chosen;’ that is, they made a conscious decision to identify as a grandmother. Non-biologically related grandmothers also did not anticipate becoming grandmothers because they were not biological mothers; thus, the opportunity to become a grandmother contributed to a life course journey that they did not expect to have. By grandparenting openly and honestly within the context of a same-sex relationships, participants strive to prepare their grandchildren for an increasingly diverse Canadian demographic by modeling a healthy and loving ‘non-traditional’ family and by demonstrating the importance of accepting differences. With respect to implications, the findings suggest that supporting non-biological parents and grandparents will be a critical step for service providers and policy makers who are working with LGBTQ families. At the level of direct practice, these family experiences underscore the importance of recognizing and affirming these non-traditional family forms. In many settings, social work practitioners have and can seize opportunities to question, confront and revisit organizational and professional practices that fail to acknowledge them.

“The LGBTQIA+ community”, like all social groupings, is moulded by dialectical forces: inclusivity/exclusivity, belonging/non-belonging, sameness/difference. Literature on it is riddled with dichotomous conflicts over (dis)identification and (anti)relationality in theory, lived experiences, and political mobilisation. Dominant discourses tend to overlook intersectional complexities therein, focus on labels over interactions, and reiterate a framing of the LGBTQIA+ as inherently vulnerable. The gaps point to a need for a more open and reparative investigation that creates space for exploring and (re)negotiating the assumed coalition. This study investigated what diverse groups of queer-identified individuals experienced when sharing their lived accounts of “sameness and difference” with others. Twenty-one people each participated in one of four focus groups and in a follow-up interview were invited to reflect on their experience. Decolonial Intersectional Narrative Analysis (Boonzaier, 2019) and a Bakhtinian-dialogical analysis (Grossen & Salazar Orvig, 2011) were used to inspect the “what” and the “how” of the group dialogues, respectively. Participants recounted significant experiences of sameness and difference that both foregrounded and transcended their particular intersectional identities. Moments/relationships of being treated as more an object than a full subject, due to divergence from certain monoglossic gendered/sexed/sexual norms (both intra- and extra-communally), were conarrated as keys to ongoing queer abjection. Participants expressed that dialoguing in this particular setting was an experience of coming-out-of-isolation, intersubjective learning, and strengthening senses of self and community. Future research and activism are encouraged to invest in accessible open dialogue as a site itself for LGBTQIA+ community-building in South Africa and beyond.

Syftet med denna undersökning är att utforska hur min queera identitet gestaltas i musik när jag skapar musik åt mig själv jämfört med när jag producerar åt andra artister. Jag upplever ibland att man kan höra på musiken att den är skapad av en queer person och vill därför utforska vilka musikaliska parametrar som bidrar till att skapa upplevelsen av en queer identitet i musik. Studien utfördes genom att jag producerade en egenskriven låt och en låt åt min klasskamrat Jakob Jansson som också studerar på Musikproduktionsprogrammet på Musikhögskolan i Örebro. Vi arbetar båda två inom liknande genrer, en slags gitarrbaserad indiepop/indierock. Jag insåg snabbt att jag använder väldigt liknande produktionstekniker i låten jag producerade åt Jakob och i min egen musik – jag bryter mot lyssnarens förväntningar och ”förstör” inspelningar för att skapa nya ljud. Detta kan tolkas som en form av queering av musiken, som bidrar till att gestalta min queera identitet även i Jakobs musik där jag inte kan använda ord och röst för att uttrycka mig. Jag använder mig även av ett ramverk av forskning inom musik och genus som argumenterar för att identiteter är performativa, och inte enbart något medfött. Min upplevelse av att höra en queer identitet i musik kan vara en kombination av att jag tolkar musiken utifrån mina egna upplevelser och att jag identifierar queering-strategier.

<p>Drag Cuisines is an interdisciplinary study of the cultural, social, and historical interconnectedness of veganism, queerness, and animality. To interrogate these links requires mixed methods such as the collection of oral histories with self-identified queer vegans, analysis of animal themes in queer film and literature, social media analysis, and analysis of food cultures and restaurant rhetorics. Following work by prominent American Studies scholars, this project posits that the practice of veganism embodies queer performativity in how queerness and animality are ontologically linked.</p>

Within occupational therapy (OT) practice there is a lack of person-centered care regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) patients. This increases LGBTQ patients’ risk for stigma, discrimination, isolation, and a fear of disclosure to healthcare professionals. As a result, LGBTQ patients may not receive appropriate or necessary care, and experience health disparities. The aim of the proposed solution, LGBTQ Voices Heard: A Video Storytelling Approach to Increase Cultural Competence, is to provide occupational therapy practitioners and students with a distinct, meaningful, and effective one-time multimedia educational training. The social penetration theory (SPT), cognitive theory of multimedia learning, and brain-based learning theory guided the program design. The SPT endorses storytelling; multiple, progressively intimate video interviews of LGBTQ patients will be presented in the educational training. The short-term intended outcomes are OT participants’ increased knowledge and confidence when working with LGBTQ patients, and the LGBTQ patients who participated in storytelling feeling that their voices were heard. The long-term outcomes are increased LGBTQ cultural competence for OT practitioners and improved quality of care for LGBTQ patients. This program design is applicable to other healthcare disciplines.