January 26th: Meg Gibson
Hagey Hall room 334, 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Dr. Meg Gibson is an associate professor in Social Development Studies and Social Work at Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Canada. Dr. Gibson’s scholarship and teaching focus on queer and trans studies, critical disability studies, social work, feminist research methods, and the history and philosophy of social services. Their current research explores several areas: the perspectives of Autistic people on "eloping" or departing suddenly from places; the ways in which different people understand and use "neurodiversity"; and the experiences of diverse parents (particularly 2SLGBTQ+ and/or disability-identified parents) in meeting the care and work responsibilities in their households -- and how policy can best support them.
The Incredible Disappearing Parent
“Parents’ Rights” Rhetoric and 2SLGBTQ+ Parents
What is it about 2SLGBTQ+ parents that makes them unthinkable to many? In recent months we have seen a surge in protests that proclaim that “parents’ rights” are being trampled by assertions of 2SLGBTQ+ (Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more) people and communities. Political and activist voices on the conservative end of North American political discourse have seized on this strategy as a way to unite and expand their base in a common cause, constructing their activities as protecting “parents” and “children”, both of whom they then depict as outside of and threatened by queer and trans communities and movements.
But of course, 2SLGBTQ+ parents also exist, and have their own thoughts and experiences of culture, kinship, and what parents – and children -- need to be “protected”. This talk will build on my own research with 2SLGBTQ parents to think about how our very ideas of kinship are, themselves, at play in contemporary understandings of sexuality, gender, parents, children, and future worlds.
| If you are unable to attend in person you can join on Zoom |