There is an "I" in Leadership

One generally accepted principle about leaders is that they must possess the ego strength and self-differentiation needed to avoid the pitfalls of dynamics such as enmeshment, co-dependency, transference, countertransference, and the violation of boundaries in order to lead effectively. As one of my mentors put it, “You have to wrestle with and rein in the ‘I’ that wants to be seen, recognized and affirmed as a leader.

Women Out of Order: Risking Change and Creating Care in a Multicultural World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010)

Reviewed by Isabel N. Docampo

Dreams/Myths/Histories: Envisioning More Livable World

In “Dreams/Myths/Histories: Envisioning More Livable World” we arrive at the duo-keynote conver- sation between the 2017 keynote speakers: C. Riley Snorton and CeCe McDonald. In their keynote conversation, Snorthon and McDonald discuss what it means to be black, trans, and unapologetic in a white violent society. They tackle a variety of topics including Afro-futurism, radical imaginaries, prison abolition, and anti-blackness both in and out the LGBTQ community

TERF Wars: Introduction

No abstract available

Sex counts: An examination of sexual service advertisements in a UK online directory

Internationally, sex work research, public opinion, policy, laws, and practice are predicated on the assumption that commercial sex is a priori sold by women and bought by men. Scarce attention has been devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) sex working as well as women who pay for sex. This is as much an empirical absence as it is a theoretical one, for the ideological claim that women comprise the “vast majority” of sex workers is rarely, if ever, exposed to empirical scrutiny. Focusing on the UK, we address this major gap in evidence in order to challenge the gendered and heterosexist logics that underpin contemporary debates. We do so by presenting large‐scale data gained from the quantitative analysis of 25,511 registered member profiles of an online escort directory. Our findings point to heterogeneity rather than homogeneity in the contemporary sex industry including in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and advertised client base. For example, while two‐thirds of advertisements self‐identify as “Female,” one in four are listed as “Male;” less than half list their sexual orientation as “Straight;” and nearly two‐thirds advertise to women clients. Our study thus challenges prevailing heteronormative assumptions about commercial sex, which erase LGBTQ sex workers and other non‐normative identities and practices, and which we argue have important political, practical, and theoretical consequences

Technological elites, the meritocracy, and postracial myths in Silicon Valley

Entre as modernas elites tecnológicas digitais, os mitos da meritocracia e da façanha intelectual são usados como marcadores de raça e gênero por uma supremacia branca masculina que consolida recursos de forma desproporcional em relação a pessoas não brancas, principalmente negros, latinos e indígenas. Os investimentos em mitos meritocráticos suprimem os questionamentos de racismo e discriminação, mesmo quando os produtos das elites digitais são infundidos com marcadores de raça, classe e gênero. As lutas históricas por inclusão social, política e econômica de negros, mulheres e outras classes desprotegidas têm implicado no reconhecimento da exclusão sistêmica, do trabalho forçado e da privação de direitos estruturais, além de compromissos com políticas públicas dos EUA, como as ações afirmativas, que foram igualmente fundamentais para reformas políticas voltadas para participação e oportunidades econômicas. A ascensão da tecnocracia digital tem sido, em muitos aspectos, antitética a esses esforços no sentido de reconhecer raça e gênero como fatores cruciais para inclusão e oportunidades tecnocráticas. Este artigo explora algumas das formas pelas quais os discursos das elites tecnocráticas do Vale do Silício reforçam os investimentos no pós racialismo como um pretexto para a re-consolidação do capital em oposição às políticas públicas que prometem acabar com práticas discriminatórias no mundo do trabalho. Por meio de uma análise cuidadosa do surgimento de empresas de tecnologias digitais e de uma discussão sobre como as elites tecnológicas trabalham para mascarar tudo, como inscrições algorítmicas e genéticas de raça incorporadas em seus produtos, mostramos como as elites digitais omitem a sua responsabilidade por suas reinscrições pós raciais de (in)visibilidades raciais. A partir do uso de análise histórica e crítica do discurso, o artigo revela como os mitos de uma meritocracia digital baseados em um “daltonismo racial” tecnocrático emergem como chave para a manutenção de exclusões de gênero e raça.Palavras-chave: Tecnologia. Raça. Gênero.Among modern digital technology elites, myths of meritocracy and intellectual prowess are used as racial and gender markers of white male supremacy that disproportionately consolidate resources away from people of color, particularly African Americans, Latino/as and Native Americans. Investments in meritocratic myths suppress interrogations of racism and discrimination even as the products of digital elites are infused with racial, class, and gender markers. Longstanding struggles for social, political, and economic inclusion for African Americans, women, and other legally protected classes have been predicated upon the recognition of systemic exclusion, forced labor, and structural disenfranchisement, and commitments to US public policies like affirmative action have, likewise, been fundamental to political reforms geared to economic opportunity and participation. The rise of the digital technocracy has, in many ways, been antithetical to these sustained efforts to recognize race and gender as salient factors structuring technocratic opportunity and inclusion. This paper explores some of the ways in which discourses of Silicon Valley technocratic elites bolster investments in post-racialism as a pretext for re-consolidations of capital, in opposition to public policy commitments to end discriminatory labor practices. Through a careful analysis of the rise of digital technology companies, and a discussion of how technology elites work to mask everything from algorithmic to genetic inscriptions of race embedded in their products, we show how digital elites elide responsibility for their post-racial re-inscriptions of racial visibilities (and invisibilities). Using historical and critical discourse analysis, the paper reveals how myths of a digital meritocracy premised on a technocratic colorblindness emerge key to perpetuating gender and racial exclusions.Keywords: Technology. Race. Gender

Contribution

C. Riley Snorton, Contribution to the panel ‘On Arrangement’, part of the symposium The Ontology of the Couple, ICI Berlin, 9–10 June 2016, video recording, mp4, 27:03 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e160609_17

Trapped in the [epistemological] closet: Black sexuality and the popular imagination

Trapped in the [Epistemological] Closet: Black Sexuality and the Popular Imagination, examines representations of the down low, a term that typically refers to black men who have sex with men and women and do not identify as gay, bisexual or queer, in news and popular culture. I offer two terms—the biopolitics of representation and the glass closet —to analyze the mediated construction of the down low. The first term, biopolitics of representation, addresses why certain representational modes occur and what they signify about contemporary arrangements of power. While a traditional politics of representation views images and other forms of representations as manifestations of ideology, the biopolitics of representation explains how representations emerge as a matter of governance, that is by focusing on both the significatory and regulatory power embedded within mediated culture. The glass closet, a paradoxical space of hypervisibility and opacity, is a metaphor and analytic I develop to understand black sexuality as that which is already understood as deviant, while simultaneously read as mysterious and untenable in mediated space. An analytic, like the biopolitics of representation, renders the dimensions of the glass closet visible. I suggest that the glass closet plays a critical part in the emergence of down low narratives, while it also demonstrates how the down low signifies a frequent relation between representations of blackness and queerness