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Critical scholars have long examined the ways in which identity categories are forcibly written upon bodies through the functioning of social norms. For many marginalised groups, such critiques have been central to challenging pathologising understandings of identity categories, often by uncoupling bodies from identities. Yet despite this, normative accounts of embodiment are still forcibly written upon the bodies of many groups of people, albeit often in mundane ways. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in the lives of trans people. This paper explores one instance of this by examining in close detail some of the key discursive strategies deployed by Oprah Winfrey in her first interview with Thomas Beatie. It is argued that Beatie is constantly drawn into a logic of 'bodily evidence' that demands of him an aetiological account of himself as a man, and from which, Winfrey concludes, he is always left lacking.

Dominant social norms relating to families shape the lives of all people. This can have negative effects upon non-traditional families. This is especially the case in terms of adoption, where a focus solely on the adoptive family can often result in the 'disappearance' of the birth family. This paper explores the location of birth families in relation to adoptive families by examining a sample of children's storybooks aimed at adoptive children living with lesbian or gay parents as but one example of how policy makers may come to identify dominant cultural norms that circulate about birth families in the context of intercountry adoption. A number of key tropes are identified across these books, namely the ghostly presence of birth families, and the representation of birth parents as deviant (thus warranting the removal of their children).

As reproductive health clinics both within Australia and internationally continue to face a shortfall in the number of available sperm donors, so there exists a growing demand for men willing to donate to clinics. At the same time, and where an increasing number of countries move toward legislating for the release of identifying information about donors to children conceived of their sperm, fewer men report a willingness to act as donors. This article suggests that this is at least in part caused by the considerable 'emotion work' involved in sperm donation. Drawing on 21 interviews conducted with gay Australian sperm donors, the article provides a thematic analysis of instances of such emotion work and explores the implications of this for the health and well-being of gay men who donate sperm both to clinics and in private arrangements.

In this paper I outline some of my own practices for teaching about non-heterosexual sexualities in tertiary education in Australia, and I suggest that one approach to teaching in this context requires non-indigenous educators to locate ourselves and our students within a relationship to ongoing histories of colonisation and the fact of Indigenous sovereignty. I also suggest that teaching about the intersections of multiple identity positions requires educators to incorporate specific teaching practices that render visible social norms, and which highlight the relationship between privilege and disadvantage. Finally, I outline the possible benefits of coming out in the classroom on multiple levels, and suggest that coming out as a white, queer educator can assist in modelling forms of engagement for dominant group students that account for their social location.

In this essay, Riggs demonstrates how heterosexism shapes foster-care assessment practices in Australia. Through an examination of lesbian and gay foster-care applicants' assessment reports and with a focus on the heteronormative assumptions contained within them, Riggs demonstrates that foster-care public policy and research on lesbian and gay parenting both promote the idea that lesbian and gay parents are always already "just like" heterosexual parents. To counter this idea of "sameness," Riggs proposes an approach to both assessing and researching lesbian and gay parents that privileges the specific experiences of lesbians and gay men and resists the heterosexualization of lesbian and gay families by focusing on some potentially radical differences shaping lesbian and gay lives.

AbstractIn this paper I explore some of the discursive practices that shape scientific knowledge in the debates surrounding conversion therapy. In doing so I identify some of the key rhetorical strategies that promote these debates as being within the realm of science, namely a reliance on foundationalist assumptions about ethics and sexuality, and the use of the 'rhetoric of pseudoscience' (Kitzinger, 1990) to construct what constitutes 'good science'. Following this I point towards the individualism that informs scientific research, and what this means for lesbian and gay psychology more generally. I conclude by outlining possible directions for 'setting our own agendas' within the area, with particular focus on the importance of the political in critical research.