A Language Convergence/Meaning Divergence Analysis Exploring How LGBTQ and Single Employees Manage Traditional Family Expectations in the Workplace

A review of the LGBTQ+ work–family interface: What do we know and where do we go from here?

“…Workplace discrimination due to a stigmatized sexual identity has been a prevalent finding in work-family research. Many LGBTQ+ employees note that they find their organization to privilege traditional heteronormative families while ignoring what constitutes a family for them (Dixon & Dougherty, 2014). These minority stressors are associated with important individual and couple-level outcomes for LGBTQ+ employees.…”

Organizing Sexuality: Silencing and the Push-Pull Process of Co-sexuality in the Workplace

“…Workplace policies have traditionally been undergirded by heteronormative expectations that effectively “other” sexual minorities and privilege certain performances of heterosexual‐identified employees, such as those who are married and have children (e.g. Dixon & Dougherty, ). As social acceptance of more diverse sexual identities has become more common in the United States, workplace policies have become more inclusive, sometimes offering protections and benefits to employees identifying with more identity categories (Human Rights Campaign Foundation, ; Williams et al, ).…”

“…The majority of extant literature exploring the intersection of policies, silence, and the regulation of sexuality in the workplace has focused on sexual minorities who feel pressure to conform to “compulsory heterosexuality” (Dixon & Dougherty, ; Eguchi, ; Giddings & Pringle, ; Rich, ), passing as heterosexual or staying silent about their sexuality. Other scholars have described employees feeling as though they are silenced by policies that exclude them (e.g.…”

“…Specifically, we are interested in exploring how dominant or “normal” sexuality is communicatively constructed and bounded and specifically how employees organize around that norm within the workplace. Previous scholarship has demonstrated that heteronormativity remains privileged (Dixon & Dougherty, ) in organizations; however, it is less clear how employees communicatively organize around that center. As such, we seek to answer the question:

RQ: How do employees negotiate silence when pushing toward or pulling away from sexual “norms” in workplaces in the United States?

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“…This study explicates part of what we call co‐sexuality, the process of how humans communicatively organize around sexuality. The process of constructing and organizing around “normal” sexuality is inherently communicative because of the link between sexuality, discourse, and communication (Dixon & Dougherty, ). We take the position that sexuality is not essential or biological; rather, sexuality has been discursively constructed and maintained (Foucault, /1990; Sullivan, ).…”