Embedded Files
Our Family Coalition
Our Family Coalition
Located in San Francisco, California, Our Family Coalition (OFC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose vision is to create an inclusive and just world where all LGBTQ families and children have visibility and opportunities to thrive as valued participants in our schools, institutions, and communities.
In pursuit of this vision, their mission is to advance equity for the full and expanding spectrum of LGBTQ families and children through support, education, and advocacy.
Research Questions
Research Questions
What strengths do queer families offer in family making and child rearing, and how do these assets resist historically pathologizing damage-centered paradigms?
How do organizations fighting for queer liberation navigate the nonprofit industrial complex, with possible consequences affecting both upstream, lasting change and their ability to support those they serve?
Thesis
Thesis
The queer community has historically been viewed and researched through damage centric frameworks which have highlighted the challenges that queer and trans people often experience. By focusing solely on the issues faced by the LGBTQIA+ community, researchers and medical professionals concluded that queerness was inherently problematic and thereby pathologized LGBTQIA+ identities as illnesses and deviant behavior. This history of harm informed my decision to center my research on observing the strengths of queer families, rather than further contributing to damage-centered models of analysis. Over the course of my field study, I observed many strengths among the families I worked with, with the most impactful being gender expansive parenting, higher rates of acceptance, egalitarian family units, and the benefits of communal raising. There were, however, several barriers which prevented my ability to observe and acknowledge these strengths, many of which were associated with facets of the nonprofit industrial complex. These obstacles included the ways in which families continue to struggle for recognition within queer social justice movements, funding constraints which so often characterize nonprofits, and subsequent mission drift in response to funding urgency. Therefore, in order to create lasting social change for the queer community and all other marginalized groups, my analysis argues that research and discussions must move away from damage-centered models in order to evaluate and uplift the strengths of communities while also removing barriers to acknowledging these strengths.
Key Terms
Key Terms
Chosen Family
As many LGBTQIA+ people have experienced rejection from their biological families, peers, and communities as a result of homophobia and transphobia, it is common for queer people to create their own "chosen families" - loved ones who may not be related by blood, but who share a commitment to loving and supporting one another.
Cisgender
This term describes those whose gender identity is aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth; the hegemonic, privileged class of individuals whose gender is affirmed by dominant culture.
Gender Expansive Parenting
Gender expansive parenting is a practice which allows children to determine their own gender identity and expression without one being imposed on them; rather than mandating youth wear certain clothes, play with certain toys, or use certain pronouns, children are given the space to learn, understand, and define themselves as they see fit.
Heteronormativity
The dominant cultural perspective which dictates that heterosexuality is the only correct or legitimate form of love. Heteronormativity is often associated with binary gender roles, such as women being the caretakers and men being the providers.
Heterosexual
Colloquially referred to as 'straight', this word refers to those who experience exclusive attraction to what general society considers the "opposite" sex (i.e., men loving women and women loving men).
LGBTQIA+
This acronym stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and Aromantic. The plus signifies that the LGBTQIA+ community is vast and ever expanding, and as such there could never be one acronym that could encompass every LGBTQIA+ person's experience or chosen labels. This resource offers a good introduction into each of these terms.
Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC)
In Finley and Esposito’s “Neoliberalism and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex”, the authors define the nonprofit industrial complex as “a set of symbiotic relationships that link political and financial technologies of state and owning class control with surveillance over public political ideology, including and especially emergent progressive and leftist social movements”. In short, the NPIC refers to the harms of contracting critical social services to under-resourced nonprofits, allowing the government to avoid accountability from providing essential services to its citizens.
Queer
Often used interchangeably with LGBTQIA+, this term has historically been used as a slur but has been reclaimed to signify those who do not fit within conventional ideals of sexuality and gender. See "A Note on Language" on the Historical Context page for more.
Page updated
Report abuse