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ABSTRACT
In this complaint biography, I consider how Title IX’s peri-performative protocols fail to address structural homophobia and transphobia. Peri-performativity is a spatial metaphor that theorizes conditions for speech and is explored in three ways. First, I use peri-performativity to investigate speech acts and silences that surround sexual harassment in academia. Second, Title IX’s peri-performative protocols often result in performative advocacy, which does not result in structural change. Third, the essay’s creative structure spatially renders peri-performativity to demonstrate how incidents of harassment operate in a larger heteroprofesssional network of signification that uniquely harms LGBTQ academicians.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee (Hollywood, CA: Focus Features, 2005).
2 I use “being there” and “being here” to distinguish between reconstructed moments of the past presented in situ (there) and instances of scholarly reflection (here). This is an adaptation of Geertz’s celebrated distinction of “being there” and “being here.”
3 Sara Ahmed, “A Complaint Biography,” Biography 42, no. 3 (2019): 517.
4 Ahmed, “A Complaint Biography,” 517.
5 A. Freya Thimsen, “What is Performative Activism?” Philosophy & Rhetoric 55, no. 1 (2022): 83.
6 Adam W. J. Davies and Ruth Neustifter, “Heteroprofessionalism in the Academy: The Surveillance and Regulation of Queer Faculty in Higher Education,” Journal of Homosexuality 70, no. 6 (2023): 1030–54.
7 Davies and Neustifter, 1039.
8 Trent Straube, Against All Odds: What are Your Chances of Getting HIV in These Scenarios? Poz.com, March 26, 2014, https://www.poz.com/article/HIV-risk-25382-5829.
9 Rhea A. Hoskin, “Femmephobia: The Role of Anti-femininity and Gender Policing in LGBTQ + People’s Experiences of Discrimination,” Sex Roles 49 (2020): 2319–36.
10 Eve K. Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
11 Lynne Huffer, Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), xii.
12 Sedona Prince, Twitter Post, March 18, 2021, 7:26 AM.
13 “Title IX Protections for LGBTQ Students,” Know Your IX, June 30, 2022, https://www.knowyourix.org/college-resources/title-ix-protections-lgbtq-students/.
14 “Equity and Diversity,” CSULB, Nov. 3, 2022, https://www.csulb.edu/equity-diversity.
15 “Title IX Protections from Bullying and Harassment in Schools: FAQs for LGBT or Gender Nonconforming Students and Their Families,” National Women’s Law Center, 2012, https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/lgbt_bullying_title_ix_fact_sheet.pdf.
16 Allison E. Cipriana et al., “Severe and Pervasive? Consequences of Sexual Harassment for Graduate Students and Their Title IX Report Outcomes,” Feminist Criminology 17, no. 3 (2022): 343–67.
17 “Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance: Harassment of Students by School Employees, Other Students, or Third Parties,” U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2001. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/shguide.pdf.
18 Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 117; Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 2.
19 Ahmed, On Being Included, 2.
20 David Cantor et al., Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct, The Association of American Universities, 2015, https://www.aau.edu/sites/default/files/%40%20Files/Climate%20Survey/AAU_Campus_Climate_Survey_12_14_15.pdf.
21 Deborah L. Brake, “The Cruelest of the Gender Police: Student-to-Student Sexual Harassment and Anti-gay Peer Harassment Under Title IX,” Georgetown Journal of Gender and Law 37 (1999): 37–108.
22 Tina Sohaili, “Securing Safe Schools: Using Title IX Liability to Address Peer Harassment of Transgender Students,” Tulane Journal of Law and Sexuality 20 (2011): 82.
23 Caroline Kitchener, “A #MeToo Nightmare in the World of Competitive College Speech,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/students-accuse-gmu-forensics-coach-sexual-harassment/585211/.
24 C. Sean Robinson, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Early Career Experiences of a Non-binary, Queer Faculty Member,” Women and Language 41, no. 1 (2018): 114.
25 J. Logan Smigles, Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022), 5; Smigles, 22.
26 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (New York, Oxford University Press, 2007), 1.
27 Davies and Neustifter, 1034.
28 Katherine Lorenz, Rebecca Hayes, and Catherine Jacobsen, “‘Title IX isn’t For You, It’s For the University’: Sexual Violence Survivors’ Experiences of Institutional Betrayal in Title IX Investigations,” CrimRxiv (2021): https://doi.org/10.21428/cb6ab371.1959e20b.
29 Lorenz, Hayes, and Jacobsen, 20.
30 José M. Aguilar-Hernández, “Queering Critical Race Pedagogy: Reflections of Disrupting Erasure While Centering Intersectionality,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 33, no. 6 (2020): 691.
31 (Un)documents, by Jesùs Valles, VORTEX Theatre, Austin, May 2019.
32 Laura M. Jiménez and Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth, “Borderlanding Academic Researchers: A Range of Whisper Networks,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 24, no. 4 (2020): 330.
33 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage 2009), 96–7.
34 Kate L. Harris, Beyond the Rapist: Title IX and Sexual Violence on US Campuses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 5.
35 Harris, 51; Harris, 52.
36 Harris, 75.
37 Harris, 75.
38 Ahmed, “A Complaint Biography,” 521.
39 Smilges, 47.
40 Ahmed, On Being Included, 124.
41 Ahmed, On Being Included, 124.
42 Ahmed, On Being Included, 128.
43 Ahmed, On Being Included, 16.
44 Ahmed, “A Complain Biography,” 518.
45 Ahmed, “A Complain Biography,” 517.
46 Harris, 78.
47 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 26.
48 Ahmed, “A Complain Biography,” 518.
49 Brokeback Mountain.
50 Kenny Jacoby, “Fresno State President Mishandled Sexual Harassment Complaints. Now He Leads All 23 Cal State Colleges,” USA Today, Feb. 3, 2022, Para 5, https://usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/02/03/cal-state-chancellor-joseph-castro-mishandled-sexual-harassment-fresno-state-title-ix-frank-lamas/9109414002/.
51 Robert J. Lopez and Colleen Shalby, “CSU Didn’t Investigate Claims that Fullerton President Inappropriately Touched Students,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-21/csu-didnt-investigate-claims-that-a-president-inappropriately-touched-students.
52 Lopez and Shalby, para. 6.
53 Robert Kuwada, “CSU’s Title IX Assessment Could Cost Taxpayers and Students More Than $1 Million,” The Fresno Bee, May 23, 2023, Para 19, https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article275650281.html.