Gender And Sexuality In Sociology Essay

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Gender and Sexuality in Sociological Research Gender and sexuality have been contested across fields for a long time now. Sociology has focused on gender and space, but not in conjunction, especially related to queer students. In addition to this, there is no generally accepted definition of queer, and it varies both between the disciplines as well as within them. However, it troubles “essentialist notions” of identity in lieu of a spectrum (Levy & Johnson, 2012). For the purpose of our paper, we chose to group together categories of sexual identity and gender identity into the all encompassing category of ‘queer.’ Anyone who identified as strictly both cisgender and heterosexual was placed outside of this labelling. This practice, while “common In the context of Sandy Alvarez’s research on safe spaces, the concept of a ‘safe zone’ was used as a marketing opportunity to claim inclusion, rather than an chance to confront real hate crimes happening on campus. Eventually “the relations between the LGBTQ community and various campus groups deteriorated” due to contestation over how safe zones should be ideally used on campus (Alvarez, 2008). This is just another example of the ways school administration can step out of real issues, especially in non-academic spaces that they may feel less agency over. However, it must be taken into consideration that Grinnell College has been cited as one of the most queer friendly colleges by the Princeton Review even though they have not been entirely receptive to the needs of queer students in the past. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that some campus administrations are more receptive when students are out on campus and have increased visibility especially with regards to the presence of student groups (Clawson, Revilla goes a step further to create “counter spaces,” which are spaces that actively fight the multifaceted oppression students, especially students of color face (Revilla, 2010). Within these “counter spaces,” students are able to develop their own knowledge instead of “uncritically accepting knowledge claims from external authorities” (Abes & Kasch, 2007). To understand why this is important, it must be taken for granted that “social power structures, such as racism, classism, and heterosexism, mediate student development” and make their way into social spaces in addition to the academic (Abes & Kasch, 2007). Revilla and Abes & Kasch agree that this is a factor that is often ignored and thus it is not enough to simply claim that a space is free from the surrounding violence if nothing is being done to actively fight against that violence. This assumption can often lead to misunderstanding and increased oppression. The modern safe space only seeks to reify power structures without fighting against

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