Queering Leadership

Podcast Transcript

Queering Leadership

How do we envision new possibilities for schooling and resist rigid frameworks of leadership by questioning and challenging what has become normalized in schooling and society?

Black queer feminist scholar and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs (2016) writes, “Our definition of queer is that which fundamentally transforms our state of being and the possibilities for life. That which is queer is that which does not reproduce the status quo” (p. 115).

Pryor (2020) defines “queer leadership as the intentional process to advance equity for sexual and gender minoritized communities through grassroots leadership strategies; specifically championing social change through institutional policy and practice” (p. 70). Queer leadership centres queer identities through challenging institutional norms and disrupting heterogendered culture that is deeply embedded in educational spaces and practices (Pryor, 2020) to lead for transformative change. However, Bowring (2004) suggests that queering leadership is not a theory about “queer” people, nor does it identify the “ideal queer leader” (p. 389). Rather, queering leadership speaks to using queer theory to challenge cis heteronormativity in leadership frameworks by disrupting harmful dichotomies of male/female, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual (Bowring, 2004). 

Ford et al., (2008) further explain that ‘queer’ in relation to leadership “does not refer to sexuality, but to the ways of recognizing and exploring (queer(y)ing) the things we take for granted as ‘normal’ in our working and non-working lives'' (p. 92). This means interrogating the “unsayable”, what is often at the margins of discourse and possibility and exposing the coercive nature of “norms” (Harding et al., 2011). It provides options and avenues to speak the unspeakable and challenge presumptions of conformity and normality in leadership, exposing what is foreclosed within these limiting constructs. For example, queering leadership demystifies visions of leaders as individuals who are dedicated, charismatic, disciplined, able to maintain order and solve problems (Rottman, 2006). Instead, it blurs the lines between leaders/followers and inside/outside by understanding that “leaders'' are contingent on “followers”, as “outside” is contingent on “inside” (Rottmann, 2006). In doing so, leaders resist normative approaches, balance self-interest with the collective good (Brown, 2023) and “to queer(y) sexuality, gender and feminism in leadership and scholarship is to present an anti-essentialist non-binary perspective recognizing fluidity and fluctuation” (Fuller, 2002, p. 85). Queering leadership embraces multiple, complex, and fluid identities, makes visible the constructed nature of norms and the institutions that support them, and acts to deconstruct those very norms (Fagan, 2023).

Author and advocate Dr. Zena Sharman (2019), shares that “to queer leadership is to transform our state of being and possibilities as leaders and members of the LGBTQ+ community. It is to resist assimilation and reproducing the status quo in favour of building something more nurturing and liberatory” (Queering Leadership: Transforming the Status Quo, para. 1). In rethinking the frameworks of leadership, Sharman (2019) hopes that we would “create space for forms of leadership that are expansive, robust and supportive enough to hold and honour the diversity of our lives, identities, experiences and ways of leading” (Queering Leadership: Transforming the Status Quo, para. 1) . Sharman (2019) also describes qualities of queering leadership in the following ways:

•  I lead with my whole body
•  I practice being right-sized in how I take up space
• I honour the messy, the uncategorizable and the vulnerable
• I feel into accountability and interdependence
• I lead in service of surviving, thriving and collective liberation
  • (Queering Leadership: Transforming the Status Quo, para. 3)

Additionally, Sharman (2019) notes that queering leadership resists shame and that “it’s an invitation to take off our armour and reveal the glorious, imperfect, brilliant selves hiding underneath” (Queering Leadership: Transforming the Status Quo, para. 10). Instead, we are encouraged to embrace this shame as a source of strength.  As Deborah Britzman (1995) shares, “queer theory offers methods of imagining difference on its own terms; as eros, as desire, as the grounds of politicality. It is a particular articulation that returns us to practices of bodies and to bodies of practices” ( p. 154). We also take seriously the question posed by Keenan and Hot Mess (2021) and apply it to leaders and leadership: “What if we took play, defiance, and imagination seriously as forms of knowledge production?" (p. 443).

In broadening our frameworks and centring historically marginalized voices, we build on our understanding of “how gender discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, stigma, cisnormativity, and heteronormativity affect everyone’s potential for leadership success” (Fagan, 2023, p. 4). As we consider boundaries of theory and thought within queer theories, we take heed of the words of Gloria Anzaldúa (1998):

White middle‐class lesbians and gay men frame the terms of the debate. It is they who have produced queer theory and for the most part their theories make abstractions of us colored queers. They control the production of the queer knowledge in the academy and in the activist communities…They occupy theorizing space, and though their theories aim to emancipate, they often disempower and neo‐colonize. They police the queer person of color with theory. (p. 274)

Similarly, Kumashiro (2001) points to the paradox of queer identity, suggesting that while queerness transgresses gender and sexual normativity, it can simultaneously normalize other ways of being. In speaking to intersections of race and queerness, Kumashiro (2001) invites us to consider what it means to claim an identity while simultaneously troubling it.

Reflection Questions:

1. How might we lead with our whole body and self, challenging institutional norms and gender and sexual “normativity”?
2. How might we centre queer identities and experiences in leadership practices?
3. What if we took play, defiance, and imagination seriously as forms of leadership?
4. How might leadership make space for the uncontainable, the messy, the changing, and the uncertain?
5. How might we apply this understanding to the work we do in communities, schools, and academies?

References

Anzaldúa, G. 1998. “To(o) queer the writer: Loca, escritora y chicana”. In C. Trujillo (Ed.) Living Chicana theory (pp. 263–276). Berkeley, Third Woman Press.

Brown, J.A.D. (2023, August 3). To be a transformational leader, you must be queer-minded. Sustainable Brands. https://sustainablebrands.com/read/leadership/transformational-leader-must-be-queer-minded

Bowring, M. A. (2004). Resistance is not futile: Liberating captain Janeway from the masculine-feminine dualism of leadership. Gender, Work and Organization, 11(4), 381-405.

Britzman, D. (1995). Is there a queer pedagogy?-Or, stop reading straight. Educational Theory, 45(2), 151-165.

Fagan, J.C. (2023). Transgender and gender non-conforming leaders and leadership: A foundational and integrative review. JMU Libraries, 243(1) 1-45. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/letfspubs/243/

Ford, J., Harding, N., Learmonth, M. (2008). Queer(y)ing Leadership. In: Leadership as Identity (pp. 91-115). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584181_5

Fuller, K. (2022). Queer theory and feminism. In Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary Educational Leadership (pp. 76–93). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367855635-7

Gumbs, A.P. (2016). Introduction. In A.P. Gumbs, C. Martens, & M. Williams (Eds.) Revolutionary mothering: Love on the front lines. PM Press.

Harding, N., Hugh, L., Ford, J., & Learnmouth, M. (2011). Leadership and charisma: A desire that cannot speak its name? Human Relations, 64(7), 927-949.

Keenan, H. & Hot Mess, L. M. (2021). Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood. Curriculum Inquiry, 50(5), 440-461.

Kumashiro, K. (2001). Queer students of colour and antiracist, antiheterosexist education: Paradoxes of identity and activism. In K. Kumashiro (Ed.) Troubling intersections of race and sexuality: Queer students of color and anti-oppressive education (pp. 1-25). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Pryor, J. T. (2020). Queer advocacy leadership: A queer leadership model for higher education. Journal of Leadership Education, 19(1), 69-81. https://journalofleadershiped.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/19_1_Pryor.pdf

Rottmann, C. (2006) Queering educational leadership from the inside out. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 9(1), 1-20.

Sharman, Z. (2019, March 30). Queering leadership. Zena Sharman. https://zenasharman.com/blog/queering-leadership

Additional Recommended Resources:

Mayo, C. & Rodriguez, N.M. (2019). Wanting More: Queer Theory and Education. In: Mayo, C. & Rodriguez, N.M. (Ed.) Queer Pedagogies. Critical Studies of Education (Vol. 11, pp. 1-8). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27066-7_1

Panelists

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