par Aguirre-Sánchez-Beato, Sara 
Référence Colloque de Sophia "Savoirs de genre, quel genre de savoir? Etat des lieux des études de genre" (19-20/10/2017: Bruxelles)
Publication Non publié, 2017-10-19
Référence Colloque de Sophia "Savoirs de genre, quel genre de savoir? Etat des lieux des études de genre" (19-20/10/2017: Bruxelles)
Publication Non publié, 2017-10-19
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | Is transphobia always expressed as negativity or overt hostility towards trans people? Does it have a fixed content? Is transphobia only expressed by bigoted and narrow-minded people? This paper proposes an alternative approach to the traditional social psychological study of attitudes to understand transphobia in the workplace. The alternative approach that I propose draws on discursive and rhetorical social psychology. It considers thinking as inherently rhetorical and argumentative; and ‘common sense’ as historical and related to power issues (Billig, 1991). In this sense, attitudes are not a fixed and coherent internal entity, but rather changing and contradictory stances taken in issues of controversy. People draw on different interpretative repertoires - systems of “terminology, stylistic and grammatical features, metaphors and figures of speech” that are used to construct subjects and objects (Wetherell & Potter, 1992) - to build their arguments. In this paper, I present a discursive and rhetorical analysis of ordinary workers’ attitudes towards gender and trans people. Five group discussions have been carried out with co-workers from five different work organisations in Brussels. They have been registered and transcribed. Contradictory interpretative repertoires have been identified in relation to both the conceptualisations of gender and the roles that gender plays in the context of work. On the one hand, social constructionist conceptualisations of gender that treat gender as a cultural product coexist with essentialists views that consider women and men as biological facts. On the other hand, arguments drawing on the notion that gender is irrelevant in the work setting are at odds with descriptions that highlight the importance of workers’ gender in terms of the different skills offered and the functioning of heterosexuality. These incongruent interpretative repertoires actually accomplish different functions that are manifested in the distinction between “diversity” and “difference”. Diversity in the workplace is praised and valued; it is presented as something that positively contributes to work performance. Difference is however connected to fear, to exaggeration and to not fitting into the organisational frame; it is depicted as an obstacle for work. This distinction set a limit between the differences that are acceptable at work and the ones that are not. Thus, the contrasting interpretative repertoires serve the function of both expressing an adherence to (gender) equality principles and values while at the same time maintaining hegemonic views on gender and sexuality in the workplace – namely cisgenderism, sexism and heteronormativity. The results show the importance of not defining the content of transphobia on an a priori and global basis since we may overlook transphobic claims that are not expressed in the way we expect them to do it (for instance, as hostility towards trans people). |
