Choices of non-normativity: On coming out as LGBTQA+ within higher education settings
Despite diversification efforts within university spaces and changing attitudes towards the LGBTQA+ community, LGBTQA+ university members continue to report ongoing discrimination. Numerous studies have addressed this gap, and new policies based on empirical research have been implemented, but in the UK, as elsewhere, much work remains to be done. This thesis examines this organisational tension, asking what are LGBTQA+ university members’ needs, and how might they be better identified, documented and met? What do they/we want within different positions in the academic hierarchy, combining multiple cultural backgrounds with specific LGBTQA+ identities, which in turn intersect with other social categories of difference? In collaboration with a diverse group of sixty participants, and based on the in-depth analysis of thirty semi-structured online interviews, this qualitative study explores the coming and being out experiences of LGBTQA+ identifying Cambridge students and staff members with a view to designing and delivering better inclusivity policies. The aims of the study are to (1) make various lived experiences heard (data description - research question one), (2) contribute to conceptualisations of LGBTQA+ identities, coming out, and non-normativity (theory development - research question two), and (3) provide policy and practice suggestions that empower LGBTQA+ individuals in the navigation of their intersecting identities within professional and non-professional university settings (research application - research question three). Overall, the findings contribute to improved understandings of the vicissitudes of ‘coming out’ within university settings. With a strong focus on ethical research practice and methodology, the study paints a ‘picture of nuance’ by showing needs in states of tension and by highlighting individuals’ roles and, thus, agency in the co-construction of their LGBTQA+ identities as non-normative. Based on the detailed analysis of individual accounts of direct experience, this research offers a critical view on ‘the coming out imperative’, ‘visibility binarism’, and ‘suggestions for all’, in part by differentiating between several forms of ‘coming out’ (e.g. accumulative, corrective, confirmative, explorative), experiences of ‘othering’ (e.g. positive, negative, direct, indirect), and types of identification (e.g. negated and affirmative, label specificity and vagueness). Key findings concern the challenges individual face when making non-normative identities visible, and thus the barriers they face in terms of safety, acceptance, and freedom that compromise their ability to act in accordance with their wishes. The research also shows how these restrictions shape individual choices around whether, how, and as what to make their non-normative identities visible in different circumstances. Considering such nuances allows the co-existence of contradictory wishes for university settings, while pointing towards the wider shared social structures in which different experiences make sense alongside each other. The result is policy and practice suggestions that can help create more inclusive and respectful university spaces where personal choice is enhanced. In addition to concrete policy and practice suggestions, this study expands constructivist approaches to the study of deviance (e.g. stigma theory, labelling theory, the othering concept), contributes to queer theorist understandings and critiques of coming out (e.g. speech act theory, performativity theory, reproduction of ‘the closet’ critique), and challenges the coming out imperative as well as binary understandings of LGBTQA+ visibility.
coming out, identity, LGBTQA+, non-normativity, qualitative research, visibility
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