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Lgbtq Parents and the Creation of Real Utopias

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Lgbtq Parents and the Creation of Real Utopias View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses July 2019 QUEERING KINSHIP: LGBTQ PARENTS AND THE CREATION OF REAL UTOPIAS Laura V. Heston University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, and the Gender and Sexuality Commons Recommended Citation Heston, Laura V., "QUEERING KINSHIP: LGBTQ PARENTS AND THE CREATION OF REAL UTOPIAS" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1655. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1655 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. QUEERING KINSHIP: LGBTQ PARENTS AND THE CREATION OF REAL UTOPIAS A Dissertation Presented by LAURA VICTORIA HESTON Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2019 Sociology © Copyright by Laura Victoria Heston 2019 All Rights Reserved QUEERING KINSHIP: LGBTQ PARENTS AND THE CREATION OF REAL UTOPIAS A Dissertation Presented By LAURA VICTORIA HESTON Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________________ Robert Zussman, Chair ____________________________________________ Joya Misra, Member ____________________________________________ Naomi Gerstel, Member ____________________________________________ Laura Briggs, Member _______________________________________ Tony Paik, Department Head Sociology DEDICATION To the family members I have lost and the ones yet to come. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the help and support of my incredibly patient and unwavering committee members Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel, Laura Briggs, and especially my chair Robert Zussman. I owe a great deal of thanks to my friends and chosen family members, each of whom contributed with inspiration and motivation throughout the years, including Ghazah Abbasi, Sharla Alegria, Irene Boeckmann, Dan Burland, Zack Clark, Katie Cicatelli-Kuc, Jill Crocker, Andrew Eliopulos, Nick Eliopulos, Sommer Gray, Melissa Hodges, Sarah Hughes, Nick Kuc, David Levithan, Zack Lewis, Elisa Martinez, Nico Medina, Billy Merrell, Miranda Nichols, Sonny Nordmarken, Tim Sacco, Mary Scherer, Chris Smith, Edward Spade, Mahala Stewart, Abby Templer-Rodriguez, Millie Thayer, Ryan Turner, and Danielle Young. Special thanks go to Earl Heston, Marie Heston, Tony Heston, Tillie Marsilii, Carol Cocciolone, Melanie Cocciolone, Michael Rieger, Craig Miller, Nancy Miller, and Chloe Miller, who teach me every day what it means to be an evolving family. Thanks to my incredible participants who took my idea of what was possible for queer families and exploded it. Finally, my eternal love and ultimate gratitude goes to Sarah Miller, whose magnanimousness fueled my writing, and me, throughout. v ABSTRACT QUEERING KINSHIP: LGBTQ PARENTS AND THE CREATION OF REAL UTOPIAS MAY 2019 LAURA V. HESTON, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Robert Zussman Parenting in queer families calls into question some of our most fundamental assumptions: that parents are biologically related to their children, that only women give birth, that all fathers are men, that families push away friendships and communities based in anything other than ―blood‖ ties, and that parenting is life-long. In this dissertation, presented through five in-depth family case studies and a series of analytic chapters based on fifty semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ adults in families with children I discuss gay sperm donors, gestational fathers, non-binary foster parents, transwomen dads, queer adopters of kids from queer birth parents, trans step-dads, and chosen third (or fourth, or fifth) parents. I argue that queer parents demonstrate the vast possibilities of parenting— and living—freed from heteronormative scripts. The forms LGBTQ families with children take, that they can seldom be reduced to two procreative bodies and their offspring, leave opportunities for queer utopian experimentation in an institution synonymous with heteronormativity. I frame these families as ―real utopias.‖ To call these families utopian is not to claim they are free of hardship, violence, sadness, or struggle. It is, however, to recognize that the new family vi forms LGBTQ people are actively producing are not simply individual adaptations to new situations but also a way of rethinking family more generally. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1. THE DEATH OF FRIENDSGIVING ............................................................................ 1 The Birth of a Queer Holiday ................................................................................. 1 Dragsgiving, a Drag Pastiche .................................................................................. 7 Family Feud ............................................................................................................ 9 Queer Futures ........................................................................................................ 11 2. QUEER FAMILY AS REAL UTOPIA ........................................................................ 14 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 14 Real Utopias .............................................................................................. 15 Queer Utopias ........................................................................................... 16 Real Queer Utopias ................................................................................... 20 Queer Structures............................................................................ 22 Queer Roles and Practices ............................................................ 26 Queer Temporalities...................................................................... 29 Methods and Overview ......................................................................................... 33 3. CASE STUDIES IN QUEERING KINSHIP ............................................................... 40 My Three Dads: Michael, Huck, and Bayani ....................................................... 40 Michael and Huck‘s Path to Parenthood ................................................... 41 Bayani: Third Dad for Now ...................................................................... 53 Transracial Adoption-Extended Family: Katie and Catherine.............................. 67 viii Co-parenting in Dyke Slope ...................................................................... 67 The Adoption Gauntlet ............................................................................. 72 ―It‘s Lesbians and a Black Kid!‖ .............................................................. 80 Party of Seven? ......................................................................................... 85 Transfeminine Fatherhood in Provincetown: Fran and Avril ............................... 88 ―I could tell my wife…was pissed‖ .......................................................... 88 Harriet and Alice Meet Fran and Avril ..................................................... 96 ―Love, Your P-town Moms‖ ..................................................................... 99 Queer Blended Family: Liz, Yasmine, Derek, and Sadie ................................... 110 Liz Makes Her Case ................................................................................ 111 Derek and Yasmine‘s Path to Parenthood .............................................. 117 ―Sometimes You Want to Do Something Even Though It‘s Hard‖ ....... 121 Claiming Narratives ................................................................................ 126 At the Gates of Queer Heaven ................................................................ 130 4. QUEER OTHERHOODS ........................................................................................... 136 Transwomen Dads .............................................................................................. 137 ―I Told Them I Would Always Be ‗Dad‘‖.............................................. 141 ―I was exhausted, so I wasn‘t a good parent‖ ......................................... 142 Trans Mothering...................................................................................... 146 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 148 Gestational Fatherhood ....................................................................................... 148 Creating ―the Pregnant Man‖ .................................................................. 148 Normative Narratives of Trans Experience ............................................ 152 ix Relationship to the Self/Body ................................................................
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