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Copyright by Katherine Ann Rogers 2017 The Thesis Committee for Katherine Ann Rogers Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Breaking the Grass Ceiling: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the U.S. Legal Cannabis Industry APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Gloria González-López Ben H. Carrington Breaking the Grass Ceiling: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the U.S. Legal Cannabis Industry by Katherine Ann Rogers Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin December 2017 Dedication To my feminist mentors, colleagues, family, and friends. Thank you for pushing and caring. You make me who I am. Acknowledgements This project grew from a system of support. First, I am grateful to the 17 women who spoke with me about their work experiences. They made space in their schedules to answer questions from a stranger, and without their generosity, this project would not exist. Next, I thank my supervisor Dr. Ben Carrington and thesis reader Dr. Gloria González-López, who taught me about doing sociological research by reading, critiquing, and supporting this project through various iterations. I also thank Dr. Christine Williams and Dr. Sharmila Rudrappa for their guidance and mentorship. I am likewise indebted to four inspiring women in my doctoral cohort—Shannon Malone, Vrinda Marwah, Ruijie Peng, and Beth Prosnitz—whose intellect, political commitment, and emotional presence continue to buoy me through graduate school. Finally, I must thank Elizabeth Reetz for sharing with me her unwavering brilliance, encouragement, friendship, and love. v Abstract Breaking the Grass Ceiling: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the U.S. Legal Cannabis Industry Katherine Ann Rogers, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Gloria González-López This study examines the experiences of women who work in legal cannabis to understand how what it means to use or distribute cannabis is changing in the transition from prohibition to legalization. Drawing on 17 in-depth interviews, I argue that women’s claims that they are engaged in professional, ethical, legitimate labor constitute a moral enterprise that contests definitions of their work as deviant and criminal. Although these claims are ostensibly color- and gender-blind, I suggest that they actually confer racialized and gendered meanings on cannabis that shore up the hegemony of white patriarchy in the industry. First, I show that my participants talk about customers and products in ways that redefine cannabis as socially acceptable for use by women and by people who are white and middle- and upper-class. Next, I suggest that individuals whose embodiments align with racialized and gendered ideals of professionalism can more easily enter the industry without experiencing shame, guilt, or stigma. Finally, I show that some white women describe sexual harassment in the industry by implicitly drawing on tropes of black and brown men as sexually deviant. Considering how race, gender, and vi sexuality constitute definitions of deviance and normality is important when answering the question of how an illicit labor market is reconfigured during legalization. This study also adds to the literature on work and organizations by investigating how an organization that is historically associated with black and brown masculinity is reconfigured and comes to be associated with white femininity. vii Table of Contents List of Tables ...........................................................................................................x! CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................1! Social Construction of Drugs in U.S. History .................................................2! Women and Cannabis .....................................................................................9! Overview of the Thesis .................................................................................14! CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................16! Politics of Representation: Postcolonial, Intersectional, and Queer Theoretical Frameworks ..........................................................................................16! Sociological Perspectives on Deviance and Drug Use .................................24! Gender, Race, and Sexuality in the Labor Market ........................................32! CHAPTER THREE: METHODS ..........................................................................37! Site of the Study ............................................................................................37! Sample ...........................................................................................................40! Method of Analysis .......................................................................................45! Engaging in Discourse Analysis ..........................................................47! Embodiment, Access, and Reflexivity ..........................................................48! Strengths and Limitations .............................................................................55! CHAPTER FOUR: THE SOCIAL (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF CANNABIS .....58! What is Cannabis? .........................................................................................60! Cannabis as Medicine, Users as Patients ......................................................61! Cannabis as Social Good, Not Social Ill ..............................................62! Patients as Sympathetic Victims ..........................................................65! Cannabis as Accessory, Users as Sophisticates ............................................69! CHAPTER FIVE: POT COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET ...................................75! Changing the Face of Cannabis: Discourses of Professionalism ..................75! Shame, Anxiety, and Guilt on the Cannabis Career Path .............................91! viii CHAPTER SIX: ONLY THE “REAL CRIMINALS” RAPE ...............................98! Reefer Madness: White Feminine Innocence and Black/Brown Masculine Violence .............................................................................................101! Racialization and Colonial Discourses .......................................................104! Identifying the “Real Criminals” in Cannabis ............................................106! Only “Real Criminals” Rape: Racializing Sexual Deviance ......................112! CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION .................................................................118! Directions for Future Research ...................................................................123! REFERENCES ....................................................................................................128! ix List of Tables Table 1. Demographic characteristics of respondents ...........................................44! x CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION The way Americans think about cannabis is changing. Public support for legalization has reached a record high. A 2017 Gallup Poll found that a majority of Americans—64 percent—say cannabis should be legalized (McCarthy 2017). This is up 4 percent from Gallup’s 2016 poll and marks sizeable turns from 2005, when 36 percent of the population supported legalization, and the late 1960s, when only 12 percent supported it (Swift 2016). Furthermore, for the first time, a majority of Republicans (51%) say they support legalization, up 9 percent from last year (McCarthy 2017). This is a landmark finding because historically, Democrats and independents have been much more likely than Republicans to express support for legalization (McCarthy 2017). These attitudinal shifts coincide with major changes in industry growth and legal measures related to cannabis. Legal cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States, expanding at a comparable rate to cable television in the 1990s and broadband internet in the 2000s (Robinson 2017). Industry sales are projected to increase by the tens of billions by the end of the decade, and up to $35 billion, some forecasts predict, if all 50 states vote to legalize (Burke 2015a). The number of legal-cannabis states doubled overnight with the 2016 national election, and nearly 60 percent (59.3%) of the U.S. population now lives in state where cannabis use is legal (McVey 2016). To investigate what might account for these changes, it is useful to consider two dimensions: 1) the history of national conversation and policy related to drugs in the United States and 2) the unique role and representation of women in association with this history. 1 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DRUGS IN U.S. HISTORY Scholars of drugs and drug policy have shown that throughout the 20th century, powerful voices in U.S. society, such as political and media elites, contributed to the social construction of “drug scares” (Reinarman and Levin 1989, Glassner 1999, Reinarman 2015), “drug problems” (Jensen and Gerber 1998), and “drug debates” (Dingelstad, Gosden, Martin, and Vakas 1996; Rosino and Hughey 2017). Anti-drug campaigns have been shown to follow similar patterns and develop through predictable processes (Reinarman 2015, Jensen and Gerber 1998). They tend to proceed as follows: 1) Politicians declare the drug a social problem, 2) media disseminate and rationalize this message, 3) political and media discourses link the drug—and whatever