Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Respectably Queer : Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations - Jane Ward

Respectably Queer

Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations

By: Jane Ward

Hardcover | 15 September 2008

At a Glance

Hardcover


$295.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $74.00 with

 or 

Ships in 15 to 25 business days

For three years the author did participant-observation at three nationally prominent queer organizations in Los Angeles-Christopher Street West, which produces L.A.'s queer pride festival; the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a 37-year-old multi-site organization; and Bienestar, an HIV services organization for gay Latinos. Ward documents the evolution of these organizations, including class and race conflicts within them, but she especially focuses on the misuses of diversity culture.

Respectably Queer reveals how neoliberal ideas about difference are becoming embedded in the daily life of a progressive movement and producing frequent conflicts over the meaning of "diversity." The author shows how queer activists are learning from the corporate model to leverage their differences to compete with other non-profit groups, enhance their public reputation or moral standing, and establish their diversity-related expertise. Ward argues that this instrumentalization of diversity has increased the demand for predictable and easily measurable forms of difference, a trend at odds with queer resistance.

Ward traces the standoff between the respectable world of "diversity awareness" and the often vulgar, sexualized, and historically unprofessional world of queer pride festivals. She spotlights dissenting voices in a queer organization where diversity has become synonymous with tedious and superficial workplace training. And she shows how activists fight back when prevailing diversity discourses-the ones that "diverse" people are compelled to use in order to receive funding-simply don't fit.

Industry Reviews
This is an important book. Ward shows how managing diversity in the LGBT non-profit sector mirrors the corporate sector's management of diversity: representing identity differences has become instrumental, not an ethic or end in itself. Her nuanced and complex case studies demonstrate how difference is contained and domesticated, and provide empirical grounding for the larger theoretical claims about the effects of neo-liberal apolitical discourses of diversity, the current funder-directed state of the LGBT social movement, and the importance of documenting ways to resist corporate diversity-speak.
--Paisley Currah, Director, Transgender Law and Policy Institute, and Associate Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY
This study will be immensely helpful to both scholars and activists who want to learn about the shaping of LGBT issues by the nonprofit industrial complex.
--Gender & Society

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

Published: 15th September 2008

More in Gay Studies for Gay Men

Young Blood : The Story of the Family Murders - Bob O'Brien
1984 : The Year Pop Went Queer - Ian Wade

RRP $24.99

$20.75

17%
OFF
Who Knew - Barry Diller

Hardcover

RRP $59.99

$46.75

22%
OFF
Indian Winter - Kazim Ali

Paperback

$44.75

Loving : A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s - NINI / TREADWELL
The Old Gays' Guide to the Good Life - Robert Reeves

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
Leeward : A Times Historical Novel of the Year 2023 - Katie Daysh
Mothers and Sons - Adam Haslett

RRP $34.99

$20.99

40%
OFF
Derek Jarman's Visionary Arts : Exploring Land and Depth - Michael  Charlesworth
My Impossible Soul : The Metamodern Music of Sufjan Stevens - Tom Drayton
Queer Studies : The Basics - David A Griffiths

$604.75

Queer Studies : The Basics - David A Griffiths