APPENDIX I

Experiences of LGBT Graduate Students

Committee on Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals
and Transgendered Persons in Sociology

Don Barrett

12/12/01

Summary:

Introduction:

This report consists of two components: 1) an email survey of graduate students who identified as LGBT or as conducting LGBT-related scholarship, and 2) a brief summary on LGBT dissertations provided by Jeffery Dennis.

Survey of Graduate Students

The focus of the survey of graduate students was to briefly assess the experiences of graduate students who self-identified as LGBT and/or conducted scholarly work on LGBT issues.  Due to the lack of funds for this research, the sampling was rudimentary and time committed to construction of the survey instrument was minimal.  Thus the results presented here should be thought of as similar to the results of a pilot study for future work. 

Sampling: In May of 2001, an email was sent to various email lists and professional contacts asking about interest in responding to a set of questions concerning the LGBT experiences of graduate students. The email also asked recipients to forward the recruitment email to other potential subjects.  From this recruitment email, 31 replies were received indicating interest in participating. 

Since many of the replies were from recently completed PhD’s, it was decided to include in the sample anyone who was currently in graduate school or had completed graduate school within the previous two years.  In early June a survey (and consent) was sent to all 31 replies, a follow-up was sent in September to those who had not responded.  In all, 27 responses were received.

 Measurement: It had been anticipated that there would be a very small response rate to the initial recruitment, and thus it was intended to conduct an email ‘conversation’ with respondents.  However, due to the higher than expected number of responses to the recruitment email, a survey was quickly developed with the assistance of Jeffrey Dennis.

The survey was broken down into two major components.  The first component focused on experiences doing LGBT scholarly work, the second focused on respondent’s experiences in graduate school.  Each section contained a relatively small number of questions, followed by prompts for longer comments.  Due to the nature and extent of the longer comments, they are treated separately further below.

A summary of survey results and respondent comments is presented on page 12.

Scholarly work on LGBT issues (tabular analysis)

In this section, the focus was on tapping any problems students encountered when doing scholarly work on LGBT issues.  For this section, scholarly work was defined as including research, applied, or theoretical work at the level of a dissertation, thesis, project, presentation, or class paper.   Of the 27, 20 reported doing LGBT-related scholarly work in some form.  Respondents who did not conduct LGBT-related scholarly work were instructed to skip this section.

Support for doing LGBT work: Respondents were asked to rate the level of support they felt they received for doing LGBT-work, and how satisfied they were with that support:

Concerns about specific topics:   

Influence on decision to enroll:

Sexual Orientation in Graduate School (tabular analysis)

In this section, the focus was on tapping any problems encountered in their graduate programs due to their own sexual orientation.  Since it was assumed that heterosexual respondents doing LGBT-research may encounter problems similar in nature to LGBT respondents, all respondents were asked to reply to this section (two did not reply to this section). 

Respondents were asked “How do/did you describe your sexual orientation?”  Of the 27 respondents, 12 self-described themselves as lesbian; 5 self-described as gay; 5 self-described with a combination of the terms dyke, queer, gay, or lesbian; 2 self-described as bisexual, and 1 each self-described as straight, heterosexual, or ‘will not classify’. 

Visibility:

Affect on extra-curricular work:

Affect on teaching while in graduate school:

      If yes:

Influence on decision to enroll

      If yes:

Demographics

Age:    mean of 30.4, range from 24 to 37

Race/ethnicity: 93% self-identified as white or European ancestry, 7% as Hispanic or black

Gender:  78% female, 22% male

Education (highest degree completed): 7% BA, 67% MA/MS, 26% PhD

All but one were full-time students when in graduate school.

Academic interests: Respondents were asked to list their primary areas of specialization; responses covered most areas of sociology including demography, cultural studies, political sociology, social movements, social psychology, gender, sexuality, race & ethnicity, youth, transgender, sports, law, education, stratification & inequality, theory, and urban studies.  Respondents were also asked to list their preferred research method; 15 preferred some form of qualitative (including ethnography) or qualitative and historical, and 11 preferred quantitative or some combination including quantitative. 

Membership: All but 2 respondents were members of at least one professional association (primarily ASA), 22 were members of multiple associations including regional associations of ASA, and 23 were members of committees within ASA or other professional organization.

Departments: All respondents were or had been enrolled in PhD granting universities and 89% described the department as having been research focused.  On average departments were described as having 25 full time Sociology professors (range 11-50).  The average size of their cohort of graduate students was 15 (range 6-50).  Almost all responses were from universities with well-known sociology graduate programs.

University: Of the 27 respondents, all but 4 were or had been enrolled in public universities, with an average enrollment of 26,473 (range 10,000-50,000).  Responses came from students enrolled in universities in the West (10), Midwest (6), Northeast (4), South (5) and Eastern Canada (2).  All respondents reported that there were open LGBT full-time faculty at their university.  All also reported that there was an LGBT group on campus, with 44% reporting participating in the group. 

Scholarly work on LGBT issues (comment analysis)

Sixteen of the 20 respondents who were doing LGBT-scholarly work wrote additional comments.  Of these 16, 14 stated that they felt support for their work from a very limited number of faculty, but felt that their work would not be accepted by most of the faculty in their department.  Reasons for a feeling of non-acceptance were that faculty would describe their work as non-sociological (4 mentioned this), that faculty expected their work to be from a deviance perspective and were unaware of queer theory or thought queer theory to be too narrow a perspective (3 mentioned this), that faculty were unprepared to address LGBT topics in papers or research (4 mentioned this), that faculty discouraged them from working on LGBT issues due to a concern that doing so would harm their career (5 mentioned this), or that there was active denigration of their work or of queer theory (5 mentioned this).  Example excerpts:

“My perspective on faculty support is based entirely on my committee, which includes only 3 sociology faculty members.  All three members of my committee have been very supportive of my work.  However, I selected my committee purposefully.  I’m not as confident about other faculty members in my department being so supportive.  For example, when I give a brownbag or practice job talk based on my work, I expect criticism and/or denigration from many members of the faculty in my department, probably arguing that my work isn’t “real sociology.”   [#113]

 “The poor preparation of faculty to work on these topics, the marginalization of LGBT concerns as an academic pursuit; the lack of colleagues among other graduate students..... We [LGBT students] rely primarily on our resources, not the department’s, to make it through school. [#3]” 

“Despite openness to choosing any topic of interest, there is a sense that to be interested in LGBT issues you must identify as LGBT; that LGBT issues are only really of issue to LGBT people; that LGBT issues are not really hard core sociology; and that as an area of concentration it’s too narrow and would not be good for your career [#6].”

“….they really do not know anything about transgendered issues. I am becoming the transgendered point person, meaning all inquiries from possible new students about studying transgendered issues are forwarded to me.” [#103]

“not enough faculty [here] have any idea what’s going on in sexuality studies.  My generation is training itself” [#3]

Two, however, noted that after they had received official recognition in some way (e.g., fellowship or paper award), that their work was then perceived as being of value.

Only three had generally positive evaluations of their overall programs, though even these were hedged somewhat.  Following are excerpts from 2 of these:

“Overall, I’d say the faculty in my home sociology department were supportive of my interest in glbt issues and scholarship.  Luckily we have several faculty with gender analysis as one of their primary research foci.  This seems to be the ‘catchall’ area for folks interested in glbt studies, even though the faculty research in progress may not directly relate to glbt issues.  I did receive more than one “warning” from faculty not to pigeon-hole myself in glbt studies…..So, support is present, but there is an under-current of caution, hesitancy, and concern which raises doubts and fears in students’ minds.” [#105]

“I never had any problems based on my research topic and it has not affected my overall standing in the department informally either. I think lots of places would be bad for LGBT grad students and while the state I live in is not so great, the department is very good. Ironically, I think there are more problems related to being female students and faculty here than there are to being a lesbian.” [#107]

Three strongly argued that the problems they had with their faculty were symptomatic of the discipline as a whole:

 “In Sociology, GLBT work is still trapped in sexual practicies, not the structures of oppression.  When you say you are working on GLBT studies, people assume that you’re interviewing 30 gay firefighters to see how they cope with prejudice, not how images of firefighters reproduce compulsory heterosexuality.[#5]”

“I think another relevant factor affecting the status of graduate students who are LGBT and/or who do LGBT scholarly work is the reputation of their advisor in the department, the university, and the larger discipline. ….. And while all graduate students, regardless of whether they conduct LGBT research, benefit from having highly regarded faculty on their committees who will advocate for them, I think that LGBT students in particular are in need of strong and vocal support in order to overcome the homophobia and heterosexism embedded not only in interpersonal interactions but in the structures and institutional practices of universities and academia more generally.” [#108]

“Due to the institutionally and culturally approved bigotries against people who do not identify themselves as heterosexual, doing important SOCIOLOGICAL work (work that has extremely important ramifications for understanding social life beyond the experiences and concerns of “queer” people) is made very difficult and sometimes impossible. The cumulative development of knowledge that we sociologists claim to seek is hindered by bigotries, whether overt or, more often, subtle and even unconscious. This hurts all of us, not just “queers” (although obviously those who are marginalized suffer the most).” [#109]

Two respondents mentioned how their perception of Sociology as not accepting of  LGBT research carried over into their decisions re the research that they would conduct as graduate students:

“so I’m staying away from what I perceive as ‘controversial’ queer topics and sticking to stuff that transfers more directly into ‘traditional’ sociology..” [#13]

“Due to the stigma associated with both sexuality research and with personal sexualities, I hesitate to pursue what I feel is quite significant and promising sociological research. I limit what I do, and am struggling with how to do work that does not compromise my marketability upon attaining my PhD. I also have a problem with the very important matter of reflexivity and disclosure to one’s audience of the position of the researcher vis-à-vis the subject matter. I do primarily qualitative work, and it is standard (and often required by publishers) to reveal to one’s audience one’s own position. In the case of sexuality research, that would require disclosing in a public forum my own sexuality, which means not only that I MUST stigmatize myself in a public forum to publish this research, but also that I make myself criminally liable (given laws that make certain acts such as sodomy between consenting adults illegal in many states).” [#109]

Sexual Orientation in Graduate School (comment analysis)

Acceptance by faculty and peers

Seventeen respondents provided written comments on their sense of integration into their graduate school departments.  Of these, four provided comments suggesting that their sexual orientation was related to an overall feeling of being marginalized in some way.  Following are excerpts from each of these respondents:

“Largely, I feel pretty marginal socially.  Intellectually, my work is marginalized, but people say I have a “sexy” topic and like to chat with me. These are not usually stimulating conversations – largely chats.”  [#3]

“Despite a relative liberal openness about LGBT people and issues in the department and despite the high percentage of out LGBT students, the department is not an LGBT space, nor is it changed by LGBT presence.  It is very much an old white straight male space, if it wasn’t for my very out and supportive life outside of grad school I would feel much more negatively about it....this isn’t just about being LGBT. It’s about the way in which white male straight space believes that personal and social issues are antithetical to academic rigor, purpose etiquette, ways of being, etc.”  [#6]

“Being a dyke has helped me integrate with other marginalized graduate students....More importantly, there are several white heterosexual 20-somethings in the graduate student population here who talk incessantly about boyfriends, marriage and children and bond over these topics.  When I have tried to enter these conversations, they shut me out.”  [#7]

“My sexual orientation was either fetishized or used as a tool to continuously oppress me.  I was oppressed either through awarding arbitrary “B” grades in courses where I presented queer topics/wrote queer-themed papers or professors urged others to deny me funding because “my work was poor” or “unscholarly.”  .....When your department is almost all white straight [region] men who bring in all the money, who wants to queer riding their coattails so close.........” [#101]

The reports of four could be characterized as having an overall sense of integration into their departments, though reporting that some component of their sexual orientation was (or had been) devalued, ignored, or marginalized in some way.  Following are excerpts from each of these respondents:

“I do believe that our relationship and status is not respected in the same way that it is for graduate students who are in a married, heterosexual relationship”  [#1]

[The respondent’s chair had stated:] “When you first came here several people doubted you had the abilities to succeed here, probably because they were uncomfortable with your being gay; but now they all want to be associated with you.”  [#2]

“I’ve really had very positive experiences so far.  But, as I said, I only interact with people who would provide positive experiences... But I can tell that with some faculty it is genuine, and with some others it is more a statement about how politically correct they are.  The grad students are great.  It’s not a big deal at all.  We all talk about my crushes and girl problems as if they are no different from straight relations.  I don’t think I could survive anywhere that this was not the case.  There are a number of other queer people in the department as well....” [#14]

“It was less important (and problematic) to the white students that I openly identified as a lesbian, than to the students of color (particularly African Americans).  About a quarter of all the students of color in the program were queer, and most openly identified as such; visibility was less an issue than the interpretation of that visibility by the other graduate students; needless to say, queer students of color were vertically integrated into the dept (as student leaders among the larger student body), but less integrated within the dept’s or university’s grad. student of color groups etc.  Queer students of color had far deeper relationships with queer students of color from other departments across the university.” [#102]

Four respondents did provide comments suggesting an overall feeling of integration within their departments. Following are excerpts from each of these respondents:

“I came out during my second year in this department, and I’ve never felt uncomfortable being out in classes I’ve taken, classes I’ve taught, or at various departmental social gatherings.” [#113]

“In some respects, people have gone out of their way for me both because I am good a student and to show that the department is receptive to lesbians. In my partners department, faculty knew my name and said hello to me months before they knew even some of the other graduate students names.” [#107]

“I felt as integrated into graduate student culture as I wished to be and enjoyed my interactions with other students.  I felt very comfortable in the department being an out lesbian feminist given the fact that my advisor was an out lesbian feminist, and several other graduate students in the department were as well.” #108

“Gay and lesbian graduate students in [institution’s] department of sociology have consistently been ranked among the top in the department.  The department had a very supportive atmosphere throughout my stay there.  They have a long history of having out queer students.” [#112]

The remaining five reported feeling not integrated into their departments, but attributed this to characteristics of their lives other than their sexual orientation: being of an older age (2 mentioned this), having interests and community outside of the university (1 mentioned this), or child-rearing responsibilities (2 mentioned this).  Note that, though not mentioned by respondents, delays in beginning graduate school (including due to child-rearing) may be due to lifecycle processes related to sexual orientation adjustment.

Teaching

Eleven of the respondents provided comments on their sexual orientation and their teaching experiences as graduate students. 

Of these 11, five stated that they had not been out in the classroom while in graduate school.  One of these reported teaching courses in which was irrelevant, two mentioned talking about sexual orientation but not mentioning their own, and two felt it important to be out but that they would postpone that until after graduate school.

Two of the respondents mentioned not being out due to concerns of homophobia by students and/or lack of support from faculty.  An excerpt re faculty support:

“I cannot come out to my students because, if a problem arose, I cannot be certain the department would trust me or cover my back.  So, being in a [region] school, I choose not to confirm, nor deny my sexuality.  Gay issues arise in the classroom, but I address it sociologically and removed from defending it personally (as a person of color may do with a racist student.)  I want to be out in the classroom because it is an important standpoint, but I doubt I will get the support of the faculty—the attitude would be, “you made your bed, now lay in it.” #101

Only one reported specific problems related to having been out in the classroom (being charged of attempting to recruit).

Four reported having been out, and having encountered no or very few problems – though two did report having some negative comments in student evaluations:

“I did, however, have a student in one of those courses write on a student evaluation that I should “keep my sexuality out of the classroom.” But, my department did not care.” [#107]

“...since my student evaluations (both quantitative and qualitative) were highly favorable on a consistent basis, I would say that my being out must not have had a negative effect.  I actually had a few students in their evaluations thank me for coming out.  On the other hand, I would occasionally receive comments from a couple of students who objected to coverage of LGBT topics.  No matter the amount of coverage, which was never any more than any other topic we covered, some students felt that LGBT issues were discussed “too much.” [#108]

Sexual orientation and choice of graduate schools

Thirteen respondents provided comments on how their sexual orientation was related to their choice of graduate schools.  Included in their decisions about graduation schools were the following: 1) the school’s reputation as a place where LGBT students and/or LGBT scholarly work was welcome (8 mentioned this), 2) the reputations of specific faculty members at the school (4 mentioned this) in terms of conducing LGBT scholarly work, and 3) the LGBT resources found in the area near the school (5 mentioned this).   Example excerpts:

“What was most important in shaping my choice was the visible presence of out queer students of color, some of whom were doing work (scholarly and community) on LGBT stuff, most of whom were not.  That made a tremendous difference for me.  Those were the first students I met - serendipitously - and whose judgment, friendship and collegiality I relied on during my tenure in the department and beyond.” [#102]

“For me, a central factor in choosing the university that I did was contact with a faculty member that was very receptive to my work AND who did LGBT work of her own.  I felt that if I had at least one strong advocate, that I would be able to get the work I wanted to do, done. It has a reputation as a very liberal/radical department in which many faculty and grad students are politically active and who take risks within sociology.” [#114]

“There are/were a ton of out students in my department (and even one out faculty member when I started), and many of the out folks were among the top-ranked students in the department.  I checked this all out when I visited and obviously this open climate was an integral part of my decision to attend grad school there.” [#111] 

Graduate school overall

Following are excerpts from concluding remarks that were offered by respondents:

“I’m the sole representative, blazing the trails for those who are too afraid to stand up for themselves, and that bothers me”  [#2]

“Academia is teeming with elite, white, male-dominant ideologies (even among the feminists) who treat minorities with a “good liberal” attitude of being “really in the know.”  But, in essence, they talk the talk, but have never walked the walk.  I refuse to remain in academia for a career.” [#101]

“Overall, my graduate education allowed me to deepen my own analysis of sexuality, broadly, as well as my involvement in the LGBT movement.  My sexual orientation and identity was important to my graduate education in terms of how I was able to connect with scholars across the university who were interested in the same issues that I was/am.  Some of the relationships I developed with other queer graduate students of color have turned into collaborative work on projects, and important liaisons for political work in the larger LGBT movement.  That there were queer faculty of color provided enormous validation for me as well as insight into what it meant for them to be out queer scholars; I suspect that this helped me to ignore/avoid some potentially negative experiences, and to be a lot more hopeful and optimistic about being a queer scholar.  Although there were several instances of faculty and graduate students being mistreated because of their sexual orientation, I never felt those situations were unwinnable or the conditions of exclusion a permanent part of the university or department.  And they weren’t – much has changed since I started graduate school.” [#102]

“Mostly I think my sexual orientation has had a positive effect on my graduate education because I came out during my second year of graduate school, and that had an immediate impact on the groups I joined, causes I took up, and research I decided to engage in.  I have a very good relationship with my mentor who is also a lesbian, and that relationship has been a major source of support that has helped me get through this program.  I think my being a sexual minority in this department (where I can name only about 10-12 LGBT graduate students in a fairly large department) has also given me a unique perspective from which to research and teach.” [#113]

“There should be no place for bigotries in academic sociology. The bigotries I hear about and experience are usually subtle, and often enacted by people who would consider themselves “politically correct” and progressive politically. Bigotry based on sex and sexual orientation is perhaps the last socially acceptable form of judgment and diminishment of people. ........I would very much like to see the ASA take a very public stand and somehow do something to help out people who define themselves in some way other than heterosexual, and/or who do research involving sex and/or sexualities. It’s time to emerge from the dark ages of intolerance. People of color, women, etc. are not to be diminished (thankfully!), so why are non-heterosexuals allowed to be? Please help. Things that would seem to help include actions intended to somehow legitimate research in this area, such as by making space (and advertising) special sessions at the ASA meetings, highlighting/profiling LGBT research in Footnotes, encouraging the ASA journals (including the top-tier ones!!!) to publish such research, etc..” [#109]

Discussion of Graduate Student Survey

Support for LGBT scholarly work: The written comments, along with the results in the survey questions, suggest a general pattern re conducting LGBT scholarly work.  Though there were a few that felt broad support within their departments for LGBT scholarly work, this was not the case for most of the respondents.  The written comments suggest that most respondents had one or two faculty members to work with and from which they felt support, but that they found there to be no or much less support for LGBT scholarly work by the remainder of the faculty (or by fellow students).  This lack of support was evidenced through active belittling of LGBT issues, lack of awareness or knowledge of LGBT issues and theory, and labeling all LGBT scholarly work as ‘deviance theory’.  In some cases the respondent felt that the professors were attempting to be protective in discouraging LGBT work, and some acknowledged that their professors were simply reflecting the status of LGBT work in the broader discipline of Sociology. 

Integration into graduate culture:  On the survey, just over half reported feeling very integrated into their departments and very few reported that their sexual orientation had negatively affected their integration into the department.  This sense of the levels of integration was not as well supported by the written comments where approximately 4 of the 17 were characterized as feeling generally well-integrated into a departmental culture.  The remaining respondents who provided written comments could be characterized as falling into one of three groups: 1) having an overall sense of marginalization (4 respondents), 2)  feeling integrated in general but with that some component of their sexual orientation was marginalized (4 respondents),  or 3) feeling not-integrated due to facts of their lives that were not related to sexual orientation (5 respondents).  Note that several respondents had anticipated a lack of integration when they initially applied to graduate school, having investigated thoroughly the departments and/or the nearby community before enrolling.  Few reported problems in teaching due to their sexual orientation.

Combining the findings on scholarly work with the findings on integration into a graduate student culture, the overall impression is of relative isolation in terms of LGBT-related scholarly work combined with some isolation from graduate student culture.  The results suggest that many can not comfortably access the broad range of expertise among faculty, instead working with a narrowly limited portion of LGBT friendly or knowledgeable faculty.  Similarly, it appears that many  are limited in terms of ability to access the breadth of tangible and emotional resources provided from being part of a network of graduate students that are going through the same experience. 

Limitations: Any generalization from these results to the experiences of all LGBT graduate students should be handled with extreme caution.  The sample was small, very few gay males or minorities replied, no responses were received from Master’s degree departments, the recruitment method was likely to have missed any students who were just beginning to become aware of their sexual orientation, and survey design problems apparently failed to encourage transgender participation.  Also, no comparison is available to other students who are neither LGBT nor doing LGBT-related scholarly work.  Despite these limitations, it is important to note that almost all of the respondents attended major research universities with widely respected Sociology programs.

LGBT Dissertations

The Queer on the Tenure Track:

Notes on the Domestication of Transgressive Sexualities in

the Academy

Jeffery P. Dennis

I attempted to discover the degree of legitimation of transgressive sexualities in the academy by comparing the job search success of every doctoral recipient who wrote on a "queer" topic, that is, on gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered identities, sexualities, cultures, or communities, with a control group. 

Between 1990 and 1995, 33 sociology dissertations were submitted on queer topics (12 on gay men, 8 on lesbians, 9 on both or general homoeroticism, 1 on bisexuals, and 3 on heterosexual attitudes toward gay people).  In 1998, 64% of the "queer" group but only 25% of the control group was employed in academe (chi square 9.106, p =.003).  Those who wrote on general gay topics were most likely to be employed (78%), followed by lesbian (63%) and gay male topics (58%).  They were 20 percentage points more likely to be employed at major research universities than those members of the control group who were employed.

Members of the queer group had published a mean of .59 articles prior to receiving their doctorates, considerably more than the .21 mean of the control group (f=6.084, p=.017), but they were not distinguished in location or prestige of their doctoral program. 30% of the authors of queer dissertations were male, and 70% female, but there was no gender distinction in job search success.  I conclude that, at least during this period, queer dissertation topics were relatively attractive to recruitment committees.

Closing Remarks

The results of Jeffery Dennis’s analysis (above), showing an overall positive effect on employment for LGBT scholars, would appear to conflict with the concluding remarks about the survey that suggested that most LGBT scholars work in relative academic and social isolation.  This contradiction seems to lend support for a hypothesis put forth by Dennis that the overall atmosphere encountered by LGBT scholars creates situations where many decide to remain closeted and/or to avoid LGBT research (and thus were not surveyed).  Along these same lines, it may be that many LGBT undergraduates, who would be competent and qualified scholars, perceive the likelihood of isolation and either do not initiate graduate work or drop out early in the process.  Thus the remainder who do continue in graduate school may represent a particularly unique group who have unusual combinations of resources necessary for handling the stresses of obtaining a graduate education under less than ideal social situations.

The results suggest that further and more detailed investigation is warranted concerning the academic and social climates encountered by LGBT scholars and students during their graduate education.