Teacher Motakef, where in daily life do LGBTQ+ families still experience barriers?
Teacher Mona Motakef: Sexual orientation and gender identity are still central reasons for social inequality and accompanied by unequal scope for action and opportunities in life. For a long time, LGBTQ+ people were denied the right to start a household at all. The very first barrier, for that reason, is for them to be able to imagine themselves as moms and dads in the very first place. Only then can they consider the choices readily available to them and which ones they want to use– for the following factor: Who can, wishes to, must or is permitted to end up being a parent and how they do it depends upon legal, medical, biological and personal aspects– it is typically really complex and expensive, specifically when reproductive medicine is involved. Even after they have actually started a family, lots of people experience legal, institutional and daily inequalities. Examples include the obligation for lesbian couples to adopt their stepchildren or the absence of rights for social parents in multi-parent families. Under the old Transsexuals Act, transgender parenting was even made lawfully difficult. To this day, it is still not plainly controlled– a transgender mother is still called as the daddy on her child’s birth certificate. In everyday life, this indicates that families need to continuously show they are “proper” households.
Dr. Teschlade, your research has revealed that families “need to produce normality”. What does that mean in concrete terms? And what does it expose about how society handle the variety of household kinds?
Dr. Julia Teschlade: Normality is no simple feat for queer households– they should actively bring it about. In general, households with heterosexual parents do not have to do this due to the fact that our society is still structured around heteronormativity. By way of example: A lesbian couple informed us that they knock on all their neighbors’ doors with homemade cake when they move into a new home. They take preventive action out of fear that other people will speak disparagingly about them since they do not reside in a heterosexual relationship. Others presented themselves to us as the “model family” and stressed their “normality”– regular employment, monogamous sexuality, traditional values as far as raising their children is worried. For us, this does not suggest apolitical conformity to heterosexual standards, however rather an existentially required action to knowledgeable inequalities and discrimination. This development of normality is made complex and tiring, however important for protecting their own lives from attacks, abasement and hurt. This remarkable effort is, however, usually unnoticeable.
Professor Wimbauer, in your work, you talk about many different “struggles for recognition”. In your viewpoint, which of these battles have especially significant effects? To what extent do they contribute to altering the law and society’s normal conceptions of household?
Teacher Christine Wimbauer: The battles for legal equality have especially far-reaching consequences– from “marriage for all” to the acknowledgment of multi-parent constellations and transgender parenting–. However daily practices of normalization can likewise be understood as a type of battle for acknowledgment. Moreover, it can likewise be seen in LGBTQ+ households that care responsibilities and other reproductive work is unevenly distributed depending on gender and typically gets insufficient acknowledgment. Gender inequalities emerge here that are popular in heterosexual couples, such as everyday care obligations, mental load, and more besides. Our research likewise clarifies society’s non-recognition of queer reproductive work, which LGBTQ+ families are obliged to undertake and at the exact same time conceal in the face of the challenges and additional effort involved in everyday domesticity. It is these struggles, however, that in turn contribute to changing dominant concepts of family. They broaden the legal and social norms of what being a parent and family are and can be.
New publication
The team led by Professor Mona Motakef, Dr. Julia Teschlade and Professor Christine Wimbauer recently published its research results in a new book entitled “Auf dem Weg zur Normalität? LGBTQ+-Familien und ihr Kampf um Anerkennung”.
To the book (German just)
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