Postcards from the edge*: gay
identity, leadership and
transformation in higher education:
Keynote address to the Higher Education and Research
Development Conference 21-23 September, 2015
*The reference to the novel by Fisher, Carrie. (1987). Postcards from the Edge. (Publ: Simon & Schuster) occurs in
relation to the film being one of the first in the 1980s to employ a epistolary mode together with a series of internal
conversations and stream of consciousness.
Robert J. Balfour
Faculty of Education Sciences, NWU
Opening Remarks: some issues
• Is it a "good idea" to disclose identity like this?
Colleagues ask whether it might limit career prospects?
Can you ever know how you are read? I might experience
something as a micro-aggression, but it might never have been
intended that way. Aggressors blame victims: was is something she
was wearing that made him do it?; she made me hit her…etc;
•
Why should I bother? After all I am visible, successful etc. So maybe
it is better to opt for silence. Except that power coopts its opponents
into silence in order to avoid further victimization.
•
Do I have a right to speak out? I come from a privileged gender,
race and class. But, this confers responsibility to speak openly. In
this case speaking truth to power is about revealing a systemic
violence inherent in institutions where past injustices are not
addressed.
Problematic labeling: gay as a western concept
• Why I use the term: Gay?
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,
Transexual Intersex, Queer, Asexual all come
laden with a politics of recognition. Colleagues
will often refer to me as gay. Heteronormativity
seeks homogeneity even in its 'others': 'they' are all gay. There is
something different about them.
• But many categories are useful for LGBTTIQA since the purpose is
to recognise difference.
• On another level, this differentiation makes sharing a political
platform uneasy. People identifying within a category can
experience difference differently. Geo-political regions make a
difference. Class makes a difference. Feminist scholarship
sometimes appears to ignore this.
What's the issue?
Philosopher Jacques Rancière argues that “… the rights of (people)
and of the citizen are the rights of those who make them a reality. They
were won through democratic action and are... guaranteed through
such action” (2006, 74). Struggles for recognition are continuous.
Legal expert Pierre De Vos (2004) argues that
the extension of marriage rights to some samesex couples will also not lead to a necessary and
fundamental re-imagining of our society” (182)
on the grounds that “Because of homophobia,
gender inequality and patriarchy in our society, gay men, lesbians and
many women in different-sex relationships often do not have the social
or economic power to freely ‘choose’ or to set the terms of their
relationships” (De Vos, 183). The same applies to work.
Why minority rights? Appiah argues that the need for such
measures arises from the fact that the simple right to human dignity
is not sufficient protection in a State where a group or individual
might still be attacked on the basis of not conforming, amongst
others, to a heteronormative ideal (2005, 109).
Where identity cannot be considered
as chosen (gay people do not choose
their desires), and where the consequences
of such identities are severe, rights or
protection cannot be assumed.
The question to ask in SA: why are gay people as a vulnerable and
minority group, rendered invisible in the world of work when it comes
to considerations affecting transformation or affirmative action?
Black people, women, disabled people are catered for. Its assumed
that LGBTTIQ remain invisible unless disclosure occurs.
Three arguments that suggest disclosure is not
straightforward because.
1st , the struggle is not yet won…
Acceptance is neither unproblematic, nor cause for (legal or other)
restitution (for example, employment equity). In SA the Constitution
though visionary, is passive; provisions are recognised through
successful contestation. If you don't fight you won't be seen.
The Employment Equity Act (EEA) 55 of 1998 defines 'designated
groups' as black people, women and people with disabilities.
Thus, whilst explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, no further
provision concerning the status of gay people as a group, is made. In
the UK, gay clergy can perform a civil marriage, but a religious
marriage, by agreement between State and Established Church, is still
illegal. Nor are gay clergy allowed to register gay marriages.
2nd , identifying as gay is still dangerous…
• Identifying as gay in academic leadership is rare, but also risky.
When I indicated to colleagues in Faculty I wanted to give this talk
the question was: Are you sure you want to? (risk to person, risk to
employment, risk to security, risk to promotion).
• What is normal? Michael Warner (1993) defines heteronormativity
as arising from the construction of normality along heterosexual
lines so that it seems 'elemental', 'the indivisible basis of all
community, and as the means of reproduction without which society
wouldn’t exist' (viii & xxi).
How to do we celebrate diversity without declaring it in
institutional settings? And, having made provision to
declare it, how do we provide for restituion?
3rd , institutions don't protect vulnerable groups…
Higher education does not provide either for restitution or provisions
even for spaces that are considered safe, or ‘gay friendly’. The choices
seem binary: marginalisation and othering, or assimilation and
invisibility. Simply put, what is the point of a safe space that is not
supported by policy (employment, admissions, bursary)
Soudien (2008) confirms that discrimination against gay persons exists
and is silenced:
with a few exceptions there has been a deafening silence on
sexual harassment in general and in residences... The silence...
does not mean that the problem does not exist... it is clear that
sexual harassment, of women and gays and lesbians, is rife
(Soudien et al, 2008, 95).
Studies in UK suggest that the sexism inherent in student fresher
competitions is not far removed from homophobia: eg. attacks on gay
students, gay women, corrective rape of men and women.
Perspectives on power and difference…or why
difference still makes a difference?
Morley (2012) argues that equality does not equal quantitative change:
declaring the equality of people, without making provision for redress of
disadvantage keeps power relationships unequal and unstable for a
vulnerable group.
Barad (2007) states that differences are made and re-made depending
on the relationship between observer and observed. Leaders are made
via the politics of difference. In institutions in which heteronormativity is
aligned with patriarchy, heteronormative culture makes for a struggle
for recognition.
Botha (2004) suggests that rather than focusing predominantly on
issues of personhood and identity, the Court should concentrate on
questions of domination and access to the means of political and
economic power.
Why does race ace gender?
Dealing with gender within the context of race-based prejudice has
been more complex because as Fraser (1996, 218) argues, gender
equity is best understood as “a complex notion comprising a plurality of
distinct normative principles”.
Beyond biological sex, its not easy to see gender. Gender without
disclosure is thus invisible. But that invisibility confirms the silence,
stigma and thus prejudice that leads to discrimination.
Unsurprisingly, social theorists & queer theorists (Diana Fuss and
Geofrey Weeks) focus on the politics of disclosure and identity.
Being out (of the closet)
Coming out (of the closet)
Being outed (from the closet)
Why auto-ethnography?
Quantitative modes do not account for the experience of difference.
Qualitative methods (interview, survey) can distort agency even while
describing the experience of difference.
In a South Africa still trying to be free, it is the voices and experiences
of people that drives the current preoccupation with qualitative research
– understanding why difference still makes a difference.
Autoethnography:
1) inserts the political agency of the subject into scholarship as a valid
source of data;
2) and is a subjective contestation of the normative objectifying
discourse of research which seeks cases, studies, and
generalisations;
3) and allows a refusal of non-disclosure. I am here I am not invisible
and I am a good leader
A tale of three (univer) sities…
What is a totem?
An animal with which the person or group
Identifies in terms of traits and values.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1953. "The Sacrificial Role of
Cattle among the Nuer", Africa: Journal of the
International African Institute 23 (3): 181–198,
retrieved 20 November 2011.
A totemic experience?
An incident which confirms the group or individual identity and values.
Ebony and ivory together in disharmony: race and sexuality at Coastal
University: 2004
Private dancer: values and sexual orientation at Sentral University.
Go West young man: Inlands University and the leader’s erasure: 2014
Blending in….or maybe not?
Public and other institutions contest the need to recognize differences
in orientation. It might be disadvantage, but it doesn't count.
Minority group leaders tend to emerge
as leaders of such minority groups
(Peter Tatchell in UK; Zachie Achmat
in SA). Those who attain prominence
do so at risk, or long after success has
been attained against the odds, often
at the cost of concealment. (see in the UK
Lord Browne: The Glass Closet).
The politics of concealment collaborates in the stereotyping of the gay
person as dirty other (with an identity that ought to be hidden). Microaggressions and the "assault on identity" are the normal experience of
minority or marginalised groups.
Sexuality is not only an attribute, but a mode of being
(Judith Butler on performativity)
+ Why does it remain difficult to think of leadership and management
from an assets-based perspective?
+ Who defines what normative leadership is
(other than an enabled middle class white male
and those able to assimilate by virtue of class,
education, or values)? Simply put, until the
scholarship shifts to reflect diversity, the industry
models associated with leadership research remains inadequate.
+ Does being white/ black/ asian etc make a difference to how I
exercise leadership? What are those differences? Do they add value?
+ Does being transgender, homosexual, lesbian make a difference to
my exercise of leadership? Why is this important to understand?
Refusing conclusions …
1) Transformation as a concept is applied selectively in higher
education institutions because of the ambiguities between the
Constitution and legislation. It is for this reason that South African
interpretations of gender (in EEA terms) remain inadequate.
2) Rendering LGBTIQA people invisible as a historically disadvantaged
group remains a form of symbolic violence that encourages, by
default, real violations, because no accountability for what occurs to
gay people, is expected. When employers ask for that information,
do they ask to value it, or simply record it? The same applies to
race.
3) Universities are legislation compliant, but do not challenge narrow
interpretations of transformation to be more inclusive.
4) The problematic of disclosure is only problematic because of the
social stigma ascribed to sexuality and orientation as sites for
political contestation.
Thank you