Brokering Identity: Social Movements and Interest Group Actors and the LGBT Coalition

Thursday, May 11, 2017

12:00 PM-2:00 PM

Zein Murib, PhD, assistant professor at Fordham University, shares her research on within-group marginalization and its effects on social movements.

This talk introduces a theoretical framework grounded in intersectionality to the study of identity-based groups in politics, raising and addressing the following questions: how within group marginalization develops, why within group marginalization occurs and to what effect? By focusing on the construction of the LGBT group and through discourse analysis of three bodies of archival evidence from 1968 through 2001 – the institutional records of several national LGBT interest groups and social movements, a variety of LGBT publications and transcripts of germane debates from the Congressional Record – this talk touches on how political actors framed the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities as a cohesive and unified coalition by presenting LGBT people as a minority group defined along a single axis of identity: sexuality. The unity of this new LGBT minority group – organized exclusively around sexuality – was achieved by foregrounding the political interests of gender-normative lesbians and gay men, particularly those who are white, middle-class, able bodied and gender normative. Consequently, issues such as marriage and second-parent adoption were elevated as the predominant political interests on behalf of the LGBT group, while others, such as the passage of gender-inclusive employment anti-discrimination legislation or political mobilizations to end the documentation of sex on state documents, were de-prioritized.

Throughout this talk, attention is drawn to the ways in which this projection of LGBT group unity obscured intersecting identifications, such as race, gender, class, nation, ability and immigration status, with significant political and material consequences for the most marginalized members of the LGBT minority group: people of color, people who are transgender, lesbians, people who are gender nonconforming, people who are poor or homeless, people with disabilities and people who are undocumented.

Join us as part of the Department of Politics LGBTQ Speaker Series.

To RSVP for lunch, please register online HERE.

Contact Information

Lauren Farmer
laf95@drexel.edu