Queering cross-sex friendships: An analysis of gay and bisexual men’s workplace friendships with heterosexual women
研究英国男同性恋和双性恋男性如何与异性恋女性建立职场友谊,挑战异性恋规范,提出“酷儿友谊”概念,对职场政策有启示。
Organizational research on cross-sex friendships frequently normalizes heterosexuality by excluding lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Challenging this heteronormative bias, this article mobilizes queer theories to examine how UK gay and bisexual men reproduce and contest heterosexist norms in the construction of workplace friendships with heterosexual women. For bisexual study participants, interview data reveal how their friendship experiences can be rendered epistemologically invisible, especially within work environments where bi-negativity is anticipated. In contrast, gay study participants appear to adopt discursive strategies in order to create friendships with women that are normatively accepted. This article develops a concept of ‘queer friendship’ as it relates to the opportunities that arise within workplace friendships for transcending heterosexist norms. It is argued that sustaining the queer aspects of workplace relationships can be challenging but worthwhile, with implications for disrupting gender binaries and developing open-ended organizational policy definitions of ‘acceptable’ workplace relationships.