Discourses of LGBTQ Activists about kinship: between homonormativity and queer alternatives

LGBTQ social movements have a crucial role in challenging the heteronormative expectations about intimacy, care and kinship and in supporting the strategic recognition of new identities and deconstructing restrictive social categories (Bernstein, 2003; Santos, 2013; Trappolin, 2004). However, queer critiques (e.g., Drucker, 2015; Richardson, 2000) have highlighted that LGBTQ social movements do not necessarily contest dominant heteronormativity, and they can contribute to the social and cultural status quo. As Duggan (2003) highlighted, equal rights politics under neoliberalism have resulted in a new neoliberal homonormativity that privileges the normative family model over radical social change or a critique of dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions. As the Gramscian notion of cultural hegemony (Gramsci, 1975) indicates, by making use of cultural forms of consensus production, worldviews of dominant groups map the world for others, becoming the border of normality and reproducing the relations of dominance as largely consensual even to those it more directly oppresses. Given the persisting power in Italy of heteronormativity, this paper focuses on the hegemonic processes that may lead to being complicit with the heteronorms, thus sustaining the heteronormative family-based forms of intimacy and kinship. Specifically, the research investigates the hegemonic heteronormative assumptions that endure in the discourses of Italian LGBTQ activists when they talk about lesbian and gay parenthood. Findings highlight the presence of heteronormative traces in their discourses, namely in terms of access to reproduction, the parents’ place within the regime of gender and the right standards for child rearing. Implications on how counter-hegemonic forces can challenge the heteronormative regime of normality are discussed.