The report is the result of a work of academic researchers and experts and aims to provide method... more The report is the result of a work of academic researchers and experts and aims to provide methodological guidelines for Local Authorities wishing to set LGBT policies based on those experienced in recent years.
La storia recente è stata segnata da cambiamenti radicali nei modi di vivere la sessualità. Sopra... more La storia recente è stata segnata da cambiamenti radicali nei modi di vivere la sessualità. Soprattutto se la si guarda dal punto di vista delle donne. Per contro, la sessualità maschile, soprattutto quella banale, quotidiana, del marito e padre di famiglia, è rimasta un universo ampiamente inesplorato, oscurato dall’apparire biologicamente determinato e quindi ovvio, invariabile, astorico. Lo scenario sembra cambiato con l’avvento della pillola blu, che ha fatto parlare di una “rivoluzione sessuale” al maschile, guidata dai saperi medici. Il volume esplora diversi ambiti (impotenza, fertilità, invecchiamento, intersessualità) in cui, nell’era del Viagra, trovano spazio discorsi ed esperienze di medicalizzazione del sesso forte. Ne emerge una tensione tra nuove possibilità di riconoscimento della variabilità e delle fragilità della sessualità maschile, e forme di riproduzione di una visione degli uomini come sex machines.
This book provides an original insight into how families of origin of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and ... more This book provides an original insight into how families of origin of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) people are involved in negotiating meanings and experiences of sexuality and intimacy, an underexplored dimension of queer family life. Delving into the perspectives of families of origin and showing the complexity and heterogeneity of the ways people with their different gender and sexual identities “do” families across generations, it contributes to querying the very distinction between families of origin and families of choice, and questions the (hetero)normative assumptions about forms and boundaries of family this distinction rests upon. A focus on marginal contexts, such as Southern Europe, and on marginal subjects, like bisexuals or black lesbians, is proposed as a way to challenge the universality of privileged narratives within heteronormativity, homonormativity and anglocentrism, and to reveal unexpected resources families of origin mobilise to make sense of GLBT identities and lived experiences. The book poses a crucial question: how can alliances along family ties develop on the basis of shared stories of family diversity and marginalised identities, rather than of loving (and normative) support to GLBT people in need and an advocacy in their name from a position of heterosexual privilege? This book was originally published in Journal of GLBT Family Studies.
The processes of reproduction and change of adult masculinities through everyday sexual practices... more The processes of reproduction and change of adult masculinities through everyday sexual practices remain largely invisible to research. Our attempt is to shed light upon these processes by investigating middle-aged Italian men's accounts of their heterosexual, ...
Does a challenge to heteronormative assumptions on parenting also involve a challenge to an imper... more Does a challenge to heteronormative assumptions on parenting also involve a challenge to an imperative of good parenting bearing the responsibility of raising healthy, well-developed children, endowed with the resources to achieve happiness, and to avoid social and personal pathologies? Or is this notion, and the medicalised frame upon which it is grounded, rather mobilised for the social and legal recognition of diversity in the forms good parenting can take?
Seeing non-heteronormative parenting as an intergenerational issue, involving parents dealing with LGBT children as well as LGBT adults as parents, the article explores the appeal of medical frames in collective self-representations of their advocates, drawing on international literature to read the Italian context. Some problematic implications of this appeal concern who gets voice as legitimate expert, which models of good parenting are sustained, and how they contribute to upholding social hierarchies.
ABSTRACT This article investigates the experiences of parents of gay men and lesbians (GL) as the... more ABSTRACT This article investigates the experiences of parents of gay men and lesbians (GL) as they negotiate the influential Catholic discourse on homosexuality in Italy, and their Catholic belonging and practice. The analysis is based upon in-depth interviews with 46 parents of gay and lesbian people. We explore how parents who are heavily involved in the religious community negotiate their role within it, but also how, more generally, parents frame their notions of what it means to be lesbian or gay in relation to Catholic discourse. Parents draw upon different, and often seemingly contradictory, cultural repertoires in order to combine, negotiate, or integrate what public discourse constructs as irreconcilable positions: acceptance of gay and lesbian lives and identities and Catholic belonging. The notion of the homosexual as being destined to undergo suffering provides room for acceptance of their child's sexual identity whilst preserving heteronormative assumptions. This frame constitutes an alternative to rejection, which is at odds with parents’ ideas of the family as being based on unconditional love. It also provides a bridge with therapeutic culture and narratives of liberation from suffering that inform, especially, middle-class family relations and the cultural resources available to them.
ABSTRACT This article argues for the importance of attention to intergenerational relations in un... more ABSTRACT This article argues for the importance of attention to intergenerational relations in understanding the conditions for access to citizenship rights and recognition for non-heterosexual people. The case of Italy, where individual entitlements and responsibilities are largely structured around intergenerational dependence, underlines the salience of intergenerational relations in relation to sexual citizenship. Drawing on a study of the families of origin of self-identified young gay men and lesbians carried out in Italy, this article explores how access to citizenship rights and the construction of the identities that can claim recognition are mediated by processes of mutual disclosure and negotiation within families. Beyond a shared notion of family ties as defined by unconditional love, a diversity of narratives are detected, linked to differences in gender, class and family cultures. It is especially when family narratives are informed by the middle-class ideology of the democratic family as a space for the development of authentic selves that access to rights becomes conditional upon compliance with the obligations of a ‘good child’, and the conditions for the reproduction of heteronormative citizenship are set.
The report is the result of a work of academic researchers and experts and aims to provide method... more The report is the result of a work of academic researchers and experts and aims to provide methodological guidelines for Local Authorities wishing to set LGBT policies based on those experienced in recent years.
La storia recente è stata segnata da cambiamenti radicali nei modi di vivere la sessualità. Sopra... more La storia recente è stata segnata da cambiamenti radicali nei modi di vivere la sessualità. Soprattutto se la si guarda dal punto di vista delle donne. Per contro, la sessualità maschile, soprattutto quella banale, quotidiana, del marito e padre di famiglia, è rimasta un universo ampiamente inesplorato, oscurato dall’apparire biologicamente determinato e quindi ovvio, invariabile, astorico. Lo scenario sembra cambiato con l’avvento della pillola blu, che ha fatto parlare di una “rivoluzione sessuale” al maschile, guidata dai saperi medici. Il volume esplora diversi ambiti (impotenza, fertilità, invecchiamento, intersessualità) in cui, nell’era del Viagra, trovano spazio discorsi ed esperienze di medicalizzazione del sesso forte. Ne emerge una tensione tra nuove possibilità di riconoscimento della variabilità e delle fragilità della sessualità maschile, e forme di riproduzione di una visione degli uomini come sex machines.
This book provides an original insight into how families of origin of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and ... more This book provides an original insight into how families of origin of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) people are involved in negotiating meanings and experiences of sexuality and intimacy, an underexplored dimension of queer family life. Delving into the perspectives of families of origin and showing the complexity and heterogeneity of the ways people with their different gender and sexual identities “do” families across generations, it contributes to querying the very distinction between families of origin and families of choice, and questions the (hetero)normative assumptions about forms and boundaries of family this distinction rests upon. A focus on marginal contexts, such as Southern Europe, and on marginal subjects, like bisexuals or black lesbians, is proposed as a way to challenge the universality of privileged narratives within heteronormativity, homonormativity and anglocentrism, and to reveal unexpected resources families of origin mobilise to make sense of GLBT identities and lived experiences. The book poses a crucial question: how can alliances along family ties develop on the basis of shared stories of family diversity and marginalised identities, rather than of loving (and normative) support to GLBT people in need and an advocacy in their name from a position of heterosexual privilege? This book was originally published in Journal of GLBT Family Studies.
The processes of reproduction and change of adult masculinities through everyday sexual practices... more The processes of reproduction and change of adult masculinities through everyday sexual practices remain largely invisible to research. Our attempt is to shed light upon these processes by investigating middle-aged Italian men's accounts of their heterosexual, ...
Does a challenge to heteronormative assumptions on parenting also involve a challenge to an imper... more Does a challenge to heteronormative assumptions on parenting also involve a challenge to an imperative of good parenting bearing the responsibility of raising healthy, well-developed children, endowed with the resources to achieve happiness, and to avoid social and personal pathologies? Or is this notion, and the medicalised frame upon which it is grounded, rather mobilised for the social and legal recognition of diversity in the forms good parenting can take?
Seeing non-heteronormative parenting as an intergenerational issue, involving parents dealing with LGBT children as well as LGBT adults as parents, the article explores the appeal of medical frames in collective self-representations of their advocates, drawing on international literature to read the Italian context. Some problematic implications of this appeal concern who gets voice as legitimate expert, which models of good parenting are sustained, and how they contribute to upholding social hierarchies.
ABSTRACT This article investigates the experiences of parents of gay men and lesbians (GL) as the... more ABSTRACT This article investigates the experiences of parents of gay men and lesbians (GL) as they negotiate the influential Catholic discourse on homosexuality in Italy, and their Catholic belonging and practice. The analysis is based upon in-depth interviews with 46 parents of gay and lesbian people. We explore how parents who are heavily involved in the religious community negotiate their role within it, but also how, more generally, parents frame their notions of what it means to be lesbian or gay in relation to Catholic discourse. Parents draw upon different, and often seemingly contradictory, cultural repertoires in order to combine, negotiate, or integrate what public discourse constructs as irreconcilable positions: acceptance of gay and lesbian lives and identities and Catholic belonging. The notion of the homosexual as being destined to undergo suffering provides room for acceptance of their child's sexual identity whilst preserving heteronormative assumptions. This frame constitutes an alternative to rejection, which is at odds with parents’ ideas of the family as being based on unconditional love. It also provides a bridge with therapeutic culture and narratives of liberation from suffering that inform, especially, middle-class family relations and the cultural resources available to them.
ABSTRACT This article argues for the importance of attention to intergenerational relations in un... more ABSTRACT This article argues for the importance of attention to intergenerational relations in understanding the conditions for access to citizenship rights and recognition for non-heterosexual people. The case of Italy, where individual entitlements and responsibilities are largely structured around intergenerational dependence, underlines the salience of intergenerational relations in relation to sexual citizenship. Drawing on a study of the families of origin of self-identified young gay men and lesbians carried out in Italy, this article explores how access to citizenship rights and the construction of the identities that can claim recognition are mediated by processes of mutual disclosure and negotiation within families. Beyond a shared notion of family ties as defined by unconditional love, a diversity of narratives are detected, linked to differences in gender, class and family cultures. It is especially when family narratives are informed by the middle-class ideology of the democratic family as a space for the development of authentic selves that access to rights becomes conditional upon compliance with the obligations of a ‘good child’, and the conditions for the reproduction of heteronormative citizenship are set.
Sex is always political. But there are historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply cont... more Sex is always political. But there are historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated. (Rubin 1999, 143)
Recent years have witnessed new processes of visibilisation of adult heterosexual men's sexua... more Recent years have witnessed new processes of visibilisation of adult heterosexual men's sexuality in the public arena in Italy, culminating in discussions on sexual scandals. The authors explore here one of these processes: the current mediatisation of a medicalised male sexuality, which appears as a more socially legitimate and scientifically grounded new discourse on masculinity. By analysing recent social campaigns on male sexual health, it will be shown how, far from opening spaces for a de-naturalisation of male sexuality and masculinity, this form of visibility through medicalisation actually works by re-naturalising male sexuality, and thereby restoring virility, through reference to highly gendered respectability and predatory sexual scripts and the disempowering of intimacy as a new sexual script promoting a situational and more symmetric understanding of gender.
A guardarli dal punto di vista delle donne, i mutamenti avvenuti negli ultimi cinquant'anni ... more A guardarli dal punto di vista delle donne, i mutamenti avvenuti negli ultimi cinquant'anni nei modi di vivere e di rappresentare la sessualità in Italia appaiono radicali. In questo articolo, li ripercorriamo seguendo un doppio binario. Nei primi due paragrafi intendiamo ...
This contribution has a double aim: to state the relevance of male homosociality as a research ob... more This contribution has a double aim: to state the relevance of male homosociality as a research object, and to illustrate the heuristic fruitfulness of looking at the situational specificities of homosocial interactions, as suggested by our research experiences. A review of research on male homosociality shows a move from viewing it as a context of reproduction of hegemonic masculinity to more contextualised understandings of its workings, also making room for the production of hybrid or inclusive masculinities. Based on our use of focus groups in two research projects on sexuality and fatherhood, we show the potential of this technique for detecting the doings of homosociality. We illustrate different uses of irony and coalition building among men, both reproducing and challenging the naturalization of gender hierarchies, and argue for the need of an intersectional approach to fully understand the situational conditions fostering persistence and change in masculinity. Keywords: omos...
Facing the deep changes in the visibility and recognition of experiences of non-heterosexual pare... more Facing the deep changes in the visibility and recognition of experiences of non-heterosexual parenthood in Italy, and the growing attention research has been devoting to them, this article proposes a sociological contribution to a needed reflection about dilemmas and responsibilities regarding the definition of the object of research, and the frames provided in the training of workers and volunteers in addressing these experiences. Prompted by an experience of training on family diversity in Torino, these reflections focus on how to recognize and avoid the risks of a categorising approach. The perspective of family practices is proposed as a possible analytical strategy to give account of the plural and situational ways by which actors give sense to their doing family in everyday life, without refraining from dealing with the symbolic and institutional weight of this term.
This contribution has a double aim: to state the relevance of male homosociality as a research ob... more This contribution has a double aim: to state the relevance of male homosociality as a research object, and to illustrate the heuristic fruitfulness of looking at the situational specificities of homosocial interactions, as suggested by our research experiences. A review of research on male homosociality shows a move from viewing it as a context of reproduction of hegemonic masculinity to more contextualised understandings of its workings, also making room for the production of hybrid or inclusive masculinities. Based on our use of focus groups in two research projects on sexuality and fatherhood, we show the potential of this technique for detecting the doings of homosociality. We illustrate different uses of irony and coalition building among men, both reproducing and challenging the naturalization of gender hierarchies, and argue for the need of an intersectional approach to fully understand the situational conditions fostering persistence and change in masculinity.
A gendered perspective, with considerations on male sexuality in particular, is fundamental when ... more A gendered perspective, with considerations on male sexuality in particular, is fundamental when it comes to understanding the long-term and recent changes in the meanings and experiences of sexuality in Italy. In support of this argument, the article points to the limited attention devoted to intersections between sexuality and gender in the construction of heterosexuality in Italian research, looks at the specific features of these intersections in the Italian context, and discusses data on sexual behaviour and attitudes from a recent national survey. The crucial issue that emerges from the discussion is the enduring power of the social processes that naturalise male sexuality, despite the challenges from women\u2019s emerging aspirations to more egalitarian relations, and their growing resources for negotiating them. The strength of recent biologising tendencies - as a global trend but also in their specific local version (building in Italy upon the well-rooted script of the pred...
The period between the 1970s and the 1990s witnessed, in the sociological field, the striving for... more The period between the 1970s and the 1990s witnessed, in the sociological field, the striving for changes in family studies that would overcome the shortcomings of current, mainly functionalist, approaches, that provided categorizing, normative understandings of family life and privileged a static and privatised notion of the nuclear family. The most internationally well-known outcome of this quest is probably the concept of family practices as it was developed by Morgan in the UK, but important conceptual developments also took place in other national sociological fields, with less international visibility. The article reconstructs one of these cases, the debates on rethinking family relations and everyday life that invested parts of Italian sociology in the same decades and sees them in dialogue with Morgan’s quest. We argue that they share many of the theoretical influences, epistemological concerns and political stances, and analyse these commonalities as rooted in the international sociological climate of critique of those decades and related to the influence of feminist research practices and theorizing. At the same time, we point out some important differences that can provide a fruitful ground for mutual contamination
David H. Morgan’s family practices approach represented a turning point in studies on family rela... more David H. Morgan’s family practices approach represented a turning point in studies on family relations in the 1990s, whose international impact is explored in the special issue through contributions from Italy and other South European countries. In this introduction we relate his proposal to keep the notion of family at the centre of sociological inquiry – while redefining its conceptualization – to a wider debate, on whether this very notion can still be relevant in understanding contemporary relationships. We then explore how the heuristic potential of the family practices approach has been taken up and developed in research, particularly in relation to centring on the everyday and on the subjects’ own perspectives. Finally, we discuss the conditions under which this heuristic potential can unfold, we describe how it has been used in the articles of this special issue, and we point to missing voices and directions of interpretation
Research in psychiatry and psychology indicates an increased risk for the health of LGBT+ people,... more Research in psychiatry and psychology indicates an increased risk for the health of LGBT+ people, identifying the main cause in prejudice and discrimination. "Minority stress" (MS) is the theory that describes the chronic condition of stigma, fear, and tension resulting from a heterosexist context. Spread far beyond psychiatric terminology, the term has taken on a multiplicity of meanings and functions, from which elements of complexity and contradiction emerge. This article analyzes the risk of re-medicalization along with the emergence of other meanings and political potentials as they unfold in the public debate in the local contexts in which the concept of MS is used. The exploration is carried out through an analysis of documentary material and online interactions. In addition, from a microsociological perspective we developed an empirical study that includes focus groups and interviews with practitioners and activists.
Given the orientation to silence non-heterosexual experiences that informs centralised Italian le... more Given the orientation to silence non-heterosexual experiences that informs centralised Italian legislation and policies, and following a European trend towards decentralisation, local administrations have taken on a fundamental role in LGBT policies, and developed partnerships with local LGBT organisations. Our analysis of these policies confirms the presence of a national as well as a more global trend, namely the fact that the ‘urban safety’ discourse has become a main source of legitimation for public intervention on LGBT issues, creating discursive boundaries that allow little space for a positive public representation of queer subjects and for the recognition of their agency. In looking at these boundaries, we draw upon the concept of ‘speakability’ which Cooper proposes in analysing local LGBT policies in the UK ‘to identify a cluster of normative and epistemological practices’ including ‘the urge and capacity to speak, the extent to which a topic or field renders itself utterable, what can be legitimately said, and a talent for speaking’ (2006: 928). In this chapter we show how the changes in the terms of speakability towards a discourse on ‘urban safety’1 imply a shift in the role of local administrations, from promoting rights, to meeting the needs of a victimised, normalised and individualised subject (Pitch and Ventimiglia, 2001). It also corresponds to a redefinition of the role assigned to the actors of civil society as partners of local governance: from bearers of claims, based upon conflictual political views, to shared interest groups.
Drawing the boundaries around sex as a purchase is an everyday accomplishment for men, a core asp... more Drawing the boundaries around sex as a purchase is an everyday accomplishment for men, a core aspect in the scripting - in particular - of heterosexual masculinity. We argue that exploring these scripting practices is a fruitful perspective to address the meanings of sex for sale within changing configurations of gender and sexuality, and to overcome simplistic, classificatory, and derogatory understandings of men as clients of commercial sex. For this purpose, this contribution discusses the analytical potential of sexual scripting theory, as a point of intersection between studies on commercial sex, and masculinity and heterosexuality studies. The interactionist perspective on sexuality developed by Gagnon and Simon makes it possible to move towards conceiving sexual practices in terms of the ‘doing’ of gender, sexuality and heterosexuality as socially intelligible realities and practical accomplishments. This requires, however, to resist reducing the concept of script to a fixed set of instructions and motives for behaviour (when, where, how and why having sex). We rather refer to the concept of ‘scripting’ as a process embedded in everyday social practices and local contexts of production, and interpret it as an ‘accounting practice’, intended as a regular day-to-day practice of reproducing social reality while making sense of it. Disentangling the different levels of sexual scripts (cultural, interpersonal and intrapsychic) and exploring disjunctions between them also contributes to grasping the multidimensionality of sexual practices. Avoiding the risk of assuming stereotypical and reified notions of traditional male sexual scripts as a gendered expression of hegemonic masculinity, such a perspective allows to look at the scripting of masculinity as a situated accomplishment, exploring the processes by which scripts are reproduced, challenged, woven into a patchwork in everyday interaction, thereby unveiling their composite and mobile character. In the process of scripting masculinity, men engage in drawing the boundaries of femininity, in which a relevant role is played by the scripting process of “slutting”, the making (and the unmaking) of a the boundaries between good and bad woman. In this contribution we illustrate how drawing upon broader accounts of heterosexual men’s sexual biographies, rather than upon accounts mainly centred on experiences of purchasing sex, allows to explore how shifting definitions of what makes (or does not make) one’s partner a slut are mobilised as tools for doing different masculinities. Our exploration also calls for further attention to be paid to the patchworking of scripts involved in what seems to be an emerging hegemonic frame of “bounded intimacy” characterising men’s demand and women’s supply in heterosexual commercial sex.
with Chiara Bertone [in Taylor Y., Addison M. (eds) Queer Presences and Absences. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, London], 2013
Given the orientation to silence non-heterosexual experiences that informs centralised Italian le... more Given the orientation to silence non-heterosexual experiences that informs centralised Italian legislation and policies, and following a European trend towards decentralisation, local administrations have taken on a fundamental role in LGBT policies, and developed partnerships with local LGBT organisations. Our analysis of these policies confirms the presence of a national as well as a more global trend, namely the fact that the ‘urban safety’ discourse has become a main source of legitimation for public intervention on LGBT issues, creating discursive boundaries that allow little space for a positive public representation of queer subjects and for the recognition of their agency. In looking at these boundaries, we draw upon the concept of ‘speakability’ which Cooper proposes in analysing local LGBT policies in the UK ‘to identify a cluster of normative and epistemological practices’ including ‘the urge and capacity to speak, the extent to which a topic or field renders itself utterable, what can be legitimately said, and a talent for speaking’ (2006: 928). In this chapter we show how the changes in the terms of speakability towards a discourse on ‘urban safety’1 imply a shift in the role of local administrations, from promoting rights, to meeting the needs of a victimised, normalised and individualised subject (Pitch and Ventimiglia, 2001). It also corresponds to a redefinition of the role assigned to the actors of civil society as partners of local governance: from bearers of claims, based upon conflictual political views, to shared interest groups.
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Papers by Chiara Bertone
Books by Chiara Bertone
A focus on marginal contexts, such as Southern Europe, and on marginal subjects, like bisexuals or black lesbians, is proposed as a way to challenge the universality of privileged narratives within heteronormativity, homonormativity and anglocentrism, and to reveal unexpected resources families of origin mobilise to make sense of GLBT identities and lived experiences. The book poses a crucial question: how can alliances along family ties develop on the basis of shared stories of family diversity and marginalised identities, rather than of loving (and normative) support to GLBT people in need and an advocacy in their name from a position of heterosexual privilege?
This book was originally published in Journal of GLBT Family Studies.
Articles by Chiara Bertone
Seeing non-heteronormative parenting as an intergenerational issue, involving parents dealing with LGBT children as well as LGBT adults as parents, the article explores the appeal of medical frames in collective self-representations of their advocates, drawing on international literature to read the Italian context. Some problematic implications of this appeal concern who gets voice as legitimate expert, which models of good parenting are sustained, and how they contribute to upholding social hierarchies.
A focus on marginal contexts, such as Southern Europe, and on marginal subjects, like bisexuals or black lesbians, is proposed as a way to challenge the universality of privileged narratives within heteronormativity, homonormativity and anglocentrism, and to reveal unexpected resources families of origin mobilise to make sense of GLBT identities and lived experiences. The book poses a crucial question: how can alliances along family ties develop on the basis of shared stories of family diversity and marginalised identities, rather than of loving (and normative) support to GLBT people in need and an advocacy in their name from a position of heterosexual privilege?
This book was originally published in Journal of GLBT Family Studies.
Seeing non-heteronormative parenting as an intergenerational issue, involving parents dealing with LGBT children as well as LGBT adults as parents, the article explores the appeal of medical frames in collective self-representations of their advocates, drawing on international literature to read the Italian context. Some problematic implications of this appeal concern who gets voice as legitimate expert, which models of good parenting are sustained, and how they contribute to upholding social hierarchies.
This article analyzes the risk of re-medicalization along with the emergence of other meanings and political potentials as they unfold in the public debate in the local contexts in which the concept of MS is used. The exploration is carried out through an analysis of documentary material and online interactions. In addition, from a microsociological perspective we developed an empirical study that includes focus groups and interviews with practitioners and activists.