Straight Woman in a Gay Man’s World: Allies’ Diversity Resources in LGBTQ Community

• In Event: 3247 - Gender/Sex and Emotional Labor in Work and/or Family

Abstract

This paper examines the role of self-identified (non-LGBTQ, or “cishet”) allies in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community in River City, a small, post-industrial Midwestern city. Allies are central to LGBTQ community formation and change in River City, a city that contains growing LGBTQ organizations alongside participants’ assertions that such organizations may no longer be needed. Using interviews and friendship mapping with LGBTQ and ally community members as well as ethnographic observations, I examine two dimensions of LGBTQ community: friendships and institutions. I argue that allies both benefit from and contribute to LGBTQ community in River City through their relationships with LGBTQ friends and institutions. I develop the concept of “diversity resources” to explain how allies draw upon and contribute to LGBTQ community and consider how the “balance” of such resources might be weighed. I conclude by highlighting the centrality of community context in analyzing allies’ use of diversity resources. In brief, analyzing diversity resources in specific community contexts helps us understand how community outsiders relate to marginalized communities in ways that both reinforce and challenge overarching systems of inequality.

Author

• Clare Forstie, State University of New York-Farmingdale