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This book presents an exploration of heteronormative discursive practices in the English countryside. A lesbian teacher describes her experiences in the rural school community in which she lived and worked. She prospered at the village school for almost ten years by censoring her sexuality and carefully managing the intersection between her private and professional identities. However, when a critical incident led to the exposure of her sexuality at school, she learned the extent to which the rural school community privileged and protected the heteronormative discourse. An autoethnographic method of inquiry provides intimate insight which is supported by external data, including email and text message correspondence. As the critical incident eventually became a police matter, police records and evidence from the UK Crown Prosecution Service were sought for use in the research. However, the collection of these data proved problematic, providing an unexpected development in the research and offering additional insight into the nature of rural life. This research offers a vivid insider perspective on the experiences of a lesbian teacher in a rural school community. It examines the incompatibility of private and professional identities, investigates the moral panic that surrounds teacher sexuality in schools and considers the impact of homophobic and heteronormative discursive practices on health, wellbeing and identity. Crucially, this research offers compelling insight into the steps that those in positions of power will take to protect and perpetuate the heteronormative discourse of rural life

Since the 1980s, in spite of societal shifts and legislation that supports women of diverse sexual identities, heterosexual norms still prevail in many workplaces. In this paper we apply Acker's (2006a) 'inequality regime' as a potential framework to unravel heteronormative practices. We use snippets from our lesbian herstories to illustrate how heteronormativity has affected our lives as women in academe. Through this paper we alert lesbian colleagues to our proposed research project on heteronormativity in academic workplaces and ask that they consider participating in this research.

Introduction: educating masculinity & heteronormativity -- Going to college: meetings & methods -- Geographies of life: work, space, & relations -- Myths of community: materialist practices and student subjectivities -- Sexuality in education: the university's marital pushes and programs -- "Lets bang!": heteronormativity & the divide of sociality/sexuality -- Conclusion: sociality in education as a form of pedagogic becoming

This thesis will discuss heteronormativity in healthcare. It will take a social science and theoretical approach to acknowledge LGBTQ+ health disparities, apply theoretical approaches to why these disparities exist, and offer solutions to combat health disparities experienced by sexual and gender minorities. Neoliberalism, bio-politics, and necropolitics will be the theoretical approaches utilized to understand the basis of disparities experienced by the LGBTQ+ community. Neoliberalism will include themes of capitalism and public health policies which influence discrimination in healthcare. Bio-politics will outline how the intersection of the biological body and politics can exacerbate health disparities through the power of controlling bodies. Necropolitics will examine how the combination of homophobia, transphobia, and racism aid in the government control of life and death of certain populations.

Tracing the significance of discrimination for power politics, this contribution clearly demonstrates that in the case of homophobia the power-political context is heteronormativity and the normalization processes resulting from it. By analyzing interviews, the paper shows how closely discrimination is connected to the power of discourse. Identity politics, strategies of essentialization, marginalization and differentiation signify an economic power aimed at normalization by constructing «the Other," i. e. the deviant, the marginal, the alien, etc. The focus of this contribution is mainly on the experiences of those interviewed with homophobia, institutional, structural and culturalist racisms, as well as with discrimination on the basis of social status. ; Während in diesem Beitrag die machtpolitische Bedeutung der Diskriminierung nachgezeichnet wird, kristallisiert sich der machtpolitische Zusammenhang für den Fall der Homophobie aus der Heteronormativität und den daraus folgenden Normalisierungsprozessen heraus. Anhand der Interviewanalyse wird gezeigt, wie die Diskriminierungen eng mit der Macht des Diskurses verbunden sind. Identitätspolitiken, Essentialisierungsstrategien, Marginalisierung sowie Differenzierung werden als eine ökonomische Macht bezeichnet, die auf Normalisierung abzielt, indem sie die »Anderen«, also die Devianten, Marginalen, Fremden etc. konstruiert. Der Fokus dieses Beitrages liegt hauptsächlich auf den Erfahrungen der Interviewten mit Homophobie und institutionellen, strukturellen, kulturalistischen Rassismen sowie Diskriminierung aufgrund des sozialen Status.

'Hetero' (from the Greek, 'different') is most familiar to us in its attachment as a prefix to 'sexuality'. In gender studies, sexuality studies and feminist scholarship, heterosexuality is routinely contrasted with homosexuality, and this contrast is often mapped over the opposition of heteronormative versus queer (ideas, practices, effects). These word-pairs (heterosexual and homosexual; heteronormative and queer) tend to operate dichotomously – that is, in exclusive, exhaustive and hierarchically ordered ways. Taking up Sara Ahmed's work on orientation, this article experiments with an alternative pairing, exploring the potential for admixture or subversion in those dichotomies. 'Heterodoxy' is introduced as a concept that might be usefully contrasted with 'orthodoxy' in sexuality/gender studies – particularly in relation to current debates on marriage. The larger aim of this endeavour is to theorise heterosexuality in more accurate ways, and to seek out understandings of heterosexuality (including its historical relationship with heteronormative marriage) which acknowledge its horrors without foreclosing hope for its future.